Did The Truth Even Matter?

To the persons involved with mainstream media who covered the Bellevue Football Investigations from June of 2015 into 2018, it is my sincere hope that this book and the two that follow will give many of you a moment of pause and reflection regarding your own actions and writings and statements made during that time period. Many of you participated in what became a rather vicious attack on a group of student athletes from a public high school (i.e. high school kids), its coaches and its collective community. Many of you “piled on,” and fed a media frenzy that was beyond unfair to those persons who were actually there.

In this era of “fake news”, words were twisted and taken out of context, fiction became fact, rumors became reality and guilty until proven innocent somehow became the new normal. The attack on Butch in the media with calls for lifetime bans in both the newspaper and on the radio and his picture on the front page seemingly twice per month for what seemed like ages was so unnecessary and so wrong and so inappropriate. You all helped feed a false narrative that was rooted in a strong distaste for that program and any persons involved with it. In the end, what you collectively did was bully a football program and bully a bunch of kids whose major crime in reality was simply that they won too many football games so you “cancelled” them. These persons literally missed the real story which was what was going on down in Renton at the WIAA headquarters and downtown at the Bellevue School District offices. To the persons involved in social media, particularly those making all those mean and ignorant comments on the newspaper websites, shame on you. Our kids read them. If your goal was to hurt young people, you were successful. How brave of you. Well, I ain’t hiding, and here is the truth in this trilogy of books. When I learned that Mike Colbrese of the WIAA actually had a person in his office reviewing the daily social media writings/comments from the Seattle Times comment sections and reporting back to him on what was said, it was in my opinion apparent that our collective high school athletic community had sunk to an incredible new low with regard to the Bellevue Football issue. The leader of the State’s governing body giving credence (of any kind) to those online comments was beyond pathetic. It became clear that there were eight primary persons involved (some with multiple online handles) with what seemed like an incredible over the top disdain for the program. When we hired forensic writing analysts to compare different writings of some of these, some information was incredibly interesting. We did find out who Odeagrad79, I Love Baseball, and Agent Zero were. All legends in their own minds. However, we never did discover who “Mr Myke” was—at least not for sure. Given what he wrote and when he wrote it, we know he was part of the “deep state” in this sordid affair. For whatever it is worth to anyone out there who is interested, I will pay five thousand dollars to the first person who can provide undeniable proof as to the identity of Mr. Myke—as the identity of Mr. Myke will explain quite a few things even more that were going on behind closed doors during the Bellevue Football investigation and aftermath. We have it down to what we think are three people, but we can’t be sure---yet. A work in progress.