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Bill McCartney Wants To Coach Again At U. of Colorado. So Now He’s Sorry For Calling You An ‘Abomination’

Bill McCartney hasn’t been the head coach of the University of Colorado’s football team since 1994, because he’s still a well known name there. He’s also well known for founding in 1994 the Promse Keepers, an all-male Christian group dedicated to the betterment of fathers, sons, and brothers. (Or, officially, it’s “a Christ-centered organization dedicated to introducing men to Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord, helping them to grow as Christians.”) And now he’s very sorry for using his position to preach hatred against gays and women.

Promise Keepers boasts the “Seven Promises,” or the core tenets of belonging. They include being “committed to pursuing vital relationships with a few other men, understanding that he needs brothers to help him keep his promises” and being “committed to practising spiritual, moral, ethical and sexual purity.” When he founded the group, McCartney said he wanted to see UC’s Boulder’s Folsom Field become a place “for training and teaching on what it means to be godly men.”

You know where this is going.

McCartney has called homosexuality “an abomination against almighty God,” among other things. And now he’s very sorry: “he Bible says the whole gospel is found in the first two commandments, and those commandments are love God and love your neighbor as yourself,” he says in new remarks. “What I regret is that I did not communicate that. I don’t judge the gay community, and anybody who gets the impression that I do, that’s just not the truth. I didn’t communicate that well that day, and I regret that. I ask the forgiveness of anyone who thinks I judged them or look down on them. I don’t.”

How come McCartney, 70, is only now apologizing for decade-old statements? Because Colorado might want to bring him back as head coach after firing Dan Hawkins for a losing season, and students, faculty, alumni, and fans have sent more than a dozen letters to Chancellor Phil DiStefano with, shall we say, some concerns. McCartney has publicly said he’d be up for returning.

Would he be apologizing for his remarks were a new job prospect not on the line? Of course not. Has he changed his mind about gays? Of course not. Has he wised up and figured out what needs to be done in order to make his hiring a smooth process? Yep.

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