Tristan Rettke. A Disgrace to the Tri-Cities and ETSU.

The question isn’t if hate speech is protected speech. It is. It’s what made Rettke comfortable displaying it?

The first East Tennessee State football game I ever attended in 1986 was historic, as well as disturbing.

ETSU 41, Davidson 16. The Buccaneers snap their 14-game winless streak.

But as I sat in the Mini-Dome as the clock ticked away in the fourth quarter, the fan beside me, knowing it was the first ETSU game I’d attended, nudged me and pointed to the direction of the band.

Someone in the band was holding up a cross, pointing it at the direction of Davidson, and had a coat or blanket of some sort draped over their head like a hood.

“What do you think of our hillbilly humor?” the fan beside me asked.

I didn’t. For the first time in my life (15-years-old) I left a game early and wondered where the hell my mother had moved me to.

I wondered what the African-American players at ETSU thought.

Maybe that’s why from 1985–93 ETSU posted only one winning season. Maybe that’s why Mike Ayers left Division I ETSU for then-Division II Wofford the following year. Maybe that’s why the Buccaneers athletic program was so associated with losing at the time (the ETSU men’s basketball program posted a 7–21 record the following season, too).

Who wants to go to a place where the band impersonating the KKK is thought to be…