Louisiana Tech honored basketball star Karl Malone alongside other legendary athletes such as Fred Dean, Teresa Weatherspoon, Kim Mulkey, Terry Bradshaw, and Willie Roaf. These athletes were all immortalized in bronze, but as the Louisiana Illuminator reported, honoring Malone has not come without controversy.
In 1983, when Malone was a sophomore at Louisiana Tech, he reportedly impregnated a 13-year-old, Gloria Bell. Malone was 20 years old. He denied fathering the child, and upon meeting the son, Demetress Bell, 17 years later, he told him, that he would have to make his own way in life. The child, who grew up to become an NFL offensive lineman, eventually reconciled with Malone and appeared at the ceremony alongside Malone and six of his other children.
This has not stopped Malone’s past from coming up whenever he is honored, and the fact that multiple college institutions are simultaneously facing fallout from sexual violence has not helped. Louisiana Tech’s history professor Drew McKevitt called into question the message that the university was sending with its honoring of Malone, telling the Illuminator, “I wonder what message the university believes it sends to our students when it installs a statue on our campus of a wealthy and famous man who sexually abused a minor when he was a star athlete.”
When Malone was asked about it during festivities around the 2023 NBA All-Star Game, where he was also honored for his contributions to the Utah Jazz franchise, which hosted the game, he said “I’m not discussing any of that. I don’t care,” Malone told the Salt Lake Tribune. “That’s my life, it’s my personal life, and I’ll deal with that like I’ve had to deal with everything. So… whatever.”
Louisiana Tech’s administration offered several examples of its employees trying their best to keep the topic on sports as when Eric Wood, Louisiana Tech’s athletic director, and Jim Henderson, the president of the University of Louisiana System, which includes Louisiana Tech, offered their insight.
Henderson, for example, said, “The university is recognizing former student-athletes who have been inducted into the highest professional halls of fame.”
This is a tone structurally very similar to Malone’s stated desire to leave his past behind him, even if it will always follow him.
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