Guilty of Stating the Obvious

Can someone please tell me what Air Force football coach Fisher DeBerry is apologizing for? The coach is accused of making racially insensitive comments about African-American athletes. Here are the comments he made after Air Force's loss against TCU:

"[TCU] had a lot more Afro-American players than we did and they ran a lot faster than we did. It just seems to me to be that way - Afro-American kids can run very well. That doesn't mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can't run, but it's very obvious to me that they run extremely well."

After making these comments, the media jumped all over him - turning this non-story into one that made the frontpage on ESPN's website and newspapers and sports sections across the country. This media hype/frenzy forced DeBerry to apologize for comments that aren't even offensive:

"It is my desire to make a public apology for remarks I made recently about minority recruitment. I realize that the things I said were hurtful to many people and I want everyone to understand that I never intended to offend anyone. ... I should have never said what I did."

Ok, now who has been hurt because of the comments Mr. DeBerry made? Who, exactly, has lost sleep over such demeaning comments (sarcasm here)? PLEASE! What the Air Force coach did was merely state what everyone else knows. African-Americans are better athletes than Caucasians. What's so bad about that? For crying out loud, the guy even used the racially sensitive term "Afro-American" instead of "Black" in his description!

I'm sorry, but I just don't see how these comments are offensive. This whole notion of political-correctness is being taken WAY too far. Tom Knott of the The Washington Times agrees. Nowadays, it seems you can't hand out compliments to specific races anymore...I know I certainly am offended when someone says Italians are good meatball makers! HA!