Cornell High Basketball Video Shows Officials Not Calling Fouls
O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody. We're inside the Airport Diner in Manchester, New Hampshire. That is breakfast. And I have to tell you from personal experience, it not only looks good, it is good. Welcome back. OK, guys, have you seen this videotape? Take a look. Seriously, roll the tape so they can look inside this camera. This is a game at Cornell High School. Watch.</s>O'BRIEN: Did you see that? He literally clothes-lined the guy. He literally clothes-lined the guy. He runs. The Cornell team is in white. Look at that shot.</s>L.Z. GRANDERSON, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED: Yes.</s>O'BRIEN: So high school basketball team, and a guy, whose nephew plays on the team, posted this video to YouTube because his goal was to show parents that he felt that the officials weren't really calling the fouls. The officials were saying -- look, after that, they called holding.</s>L.Z. GRANDERSON, SENIOR WRITER & COLUMNIST, ESPN MAGAZINE: That's a flagrant foul, that's what it is. The kid should have been kicked out.</s>O'BRIEN: Every single time I see this -- I mean, he literally -- that one clocks him in the face, practically. Another one, where he clothes-lined. The kid's feet are probably four feet off the ground. It's absolutely shocking. But what is more shocking is what the coach had to say, L.Z., which was that he feels that the kid is a good kid. He says a teddy bear. This is the player, the 6'3", 200-whatever player, is a teddy bear. And he basically says he's the victim in this.</s>RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, the victim or not, the answer is, we don't know, right? This is kind of like, this is kind of like the --</s>O'BRIEN: What do you mean you don't know?</s>BROWNSTEIN: We don't know anything about this kid. We know five seconds of what we've seen. and the way the modern world works, with YouTube, and things going viral, is your worst moment as an individual, as a private citizen, is going to be -- is going to be what ultimately expands around the world.</s>O'BRIEN: I've got to say I disagree. OK, roll the tape while Ron is talking.</s>O'BRIEN: Go ahead,</s>L.Z. BROWNSTEIN: Who knows?</s>GRANDERSON: It's not five seconds, though. The video is actually five minutes long.</s>GRANDERSON: I mean, he accumulates about five fouls in a 10-minute time.</s>GRANDERSON: So, you don't know him personally. You don't know his personality.</s>BROWNSTEIN: The kid -- look, it's obvious, ridiculous. Flagrant foul, as you say. When you look at something like this, you know, it's hard enough to deal with growing up without it becoming viral or discussed on a cable morning show. That's kind of the world that we're in, I think, Soledad. Where individuals that are picked out of the mass and kind of brought out, you know, and kind of the whole thing explodes. And it's always going to be your worst moment that explodes. Almost always.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Of course, we don't give away the blame to the kid, but the referees are the ones to blame. Obviously --</s>O'BRIEN: Well, that's why the guy -- his name is Michael Christenson. He actually posted this because he thought that the referees were so flagrant themselves and ignoring the flagrant fouls.</s>BROWNSTEIN: He's a teddy bear that hits like a truck, yes.</s>O'BRIEN: Hits like a truck. Yes, I would say that's a very good description of it.</s>GRANDERSON: He calls him a teddy bear. He's really a grizzly bear.</s>O'BRIEN: You know, when the coach said --</s>BROWNSTEIN: We don't know.</s>O'BRIEN: We're going to take a break because I can go on about this forever. But when the coach said that this kid --