A Team Stands Tall

Newsweek, April, 2007 by Raina Kelley, Mark Starr and Eve Conant

It was a team meeting unlike any other. Seated on straight-backed chairs and couches in a living room of the New Jersey governor's mansion just outside Princeton, 10 members of Rutgers University's women's basketball team shared their pain with Don Imus last Thursday over sandwiches, salads and sodas. C. Vivian Stringer, coach of the Scarlet Knights, told the recently fired radio host that he had robbed her players of their triumphant moment. "I told Mr. Imus, 'I can't believe I even have to say the word 'ho'," Stringer told NEWSWEEK.

Imus seemed genuinely apologetic, asking for forgiveness and telling the players and their relatives--about two dozen participants in all--that making fun of people was just what he did. He insisted that he didn't mean to hurt anyone,...