[edit: This blog was typed on July 22, but lost to cyber space for a couple weeks. Our apologies.]

Been unloading my voicemail box here at the blog-cave for about 20 minutes now. Any time you write about Stacy Johnson-Klein, it is guaranteed that your voicemail will be jammed like a Chinese commuter train. I could write the shortest column in history, one sentence -- "Stacy Johnson-Klein has yellow hair." -- and the next day I would have 14 messages saying it was the best column ever written, and another couple dozen saying I was absolutely wrong and should consider a career in sewer-dwelling.

One friendly caller led off his voicemail by saying, "Apparently, you do not believe in our justice system."

This is a great place to start for a little surplus to last Friday's SJ-K column*, which 10 out of 11 dentists agree had unhealthy levels of sarcasm. My point was pretty simple. Stacy Johnson-Klein now has a job in marketing, which she is really good at. And she does NOT have a job coaching college students, which about ever single player she coached at Fresno State would say is a great thing. So really, it's win-win. The caller was obviously not a fan of the column, and in that snippet of his message was referring to the rather large settlement ($9 million) that Johnson-Klein won in a civil suit against her former employer, Fresno State.

Here's the thing: Whether Johnson-Klein deserved to win a settlement against Fresno State, and whether she should be a college basketball coach, are two entirely different topics. Did she deserve to win a settlement? Probably. Maybe. I just don't know because I don't know how much of what was said on the witness stand was true and how much of it was lies. There were obviously a lot of lies. Johnson-Klein said she was groped by the athletic director, Scott Johnson, in a car wash. He said it didn't happen. A school employee said Johnson had sex with another school employee as she was lying in the bed next to them. He said it didn't happen. Johnson-Klein said Johnson asked her to go to a cabin, or somewhere like that, for the weekend. He said it didn't happen. The contradictions went on and on. My guess is, at least a half dozen people committed purgery at some point in the trial.

The trial was filled with wild accusations and startling statements*, and sorting it out would take us roughly 17 years. Imagine someone being dragged by a horse. Rope around the ankles. Head bouncing off cactus. Now imagine yelling at that person, "What's the square root of 192,211?" That's the look the Fresno State defense attorneys had for most of the trial.

*Take this example: At one point, Johnson-Klein said on the witness stand that she had been raped by her uncle while growing up in Oklahoma. It really had no relevence to the Fresno State lawsuit, other than to show how traumatized Johnson-Klein felt while trapped in the alleged car wash incident. (You would assume that a scenario like that would be traumatic for anyone, not just a former rape victim, but you can see why the prosecution wanted it out there. It makes her more sympathetic. That's in no way to minimize what might have happened back in Oklahoma, but sexual harrassment is sexual harrassment regardless of the person's past trauma, right? The answer to that question is of course, "No." In a jury trial, it's all about emotion and sympathy, and as you can see, it worked, because the jury originally awarded her $19.1 million.) But the uncle story went pretty much unchallenged. I mean, we're talking about rape here. That's a serious allegation. Who is this uncle? What's his name? Does he deny this? Was he charged? Is he in jail? If not, shouldn't someone be getting him off the streets?

It just kind of got buried in the next day's wild accusations and startling statements.

I should say that even though my column concerning Johnson-Klein's new employment could be construed as anti-Johnson-Klein, I don't have any strong feelings about her personally. I don't really know her. We've had two phone conversations a couple years ago after I first moved to Fresno. She called me at the Bee office and I got the impression that she was recruiting me. I'm still not exactly sure for what, but clearly there were two sides, her side and another side, and she was trying to get me to come aboard.

At that time I couldn't fully fathom who Stacy Johnson-Klein was, didn't know most of her story, and certainly didn't know most of what came out in her civil suit against Fresno State. Mostly, I just listened. She talked about Jesus quite a bit. She cursed quite a bit. She was all over the place. It was, as are most things involving the former Fresno State women's basketball coach, entertaining. It was interesting, though, to be having a conversation with her and not have ever met her. I knew what she looked like, but only in headshots. Now almost everyone will tell you that Johnson-Klein smothers men in whatever it is that she puts off. I don't mean that she comes on to men. I mean that she wears low-cut tops and tight skirts and she is touchy. She hugs a lot. She stands close. It's tough to explain, but she just oozes sexuality. Again, I have no experienced this first hand, but have heard plenty of stories from other reporters.

Having heard the evidence and talked to many of the people involved, there is a very good chance Stacy Johnson-Klein should have won a lawsuit against Fresno State. Was the monetary amount fair? I don't know. But as a reporter, I can tell you that the university does not share anything negative with the media, especially concerning personel matters. Yet after the Johnson-Klein firing they held a press conference detailing pretty much every one of her shortcomings. You can't treat your employees differently. It's just asking for trouble.

The point of all of this, though, is that winning the lawsuit doesn't vindicate Johnson-Klein as a coach of young people. She was, by all accounts, a tyrant. She yelled and stomped. She went for days at a time without even coming to the office. She missed practices. She went on a recruiting trip to China that yielded no recruits. She had a sleepover at her house for her players (according to testimony) and talked about innappropriate things. Oh, yeah, and she took pain pills from at least one of her players, which is probably a misdemeaner. She constantly threatened to take away their scholarships. If you even mention her name, they still glare you into silence. They hated her. Even worse, they didn't respect her. Maybe it was her personality, her behavior; maybe it was all affected by the pain pill problem. Whatever it was, it wasn't good.

But the real problem with Johnson-Klein coaching college athletes was that she was the star. She was the focus. She was, without a doubt, the most important thing about Fresno State women's basketball during the years she coached. The media guide was filled with her glamour shots. Her career was more important than her players' careers, and that is absolutely unacceptable. That might be true of a lot of coaches (although I hope not), but at least they hide it a little better. She was pretty unapologetic. You cannot blame something like that on pain pills. It's just who she is.

So when I hear Johnson-Klein supporters say things like, "Apparently, you do not believe in our justice system," it's frustrating. (And believe me, I hear a lot of it every time I write about her.) The trial and Johnson-Klein's coaching are completely different topics. The trial was about Fresno State and its treatment of an employee. Whether Johnson-Klein deserved to be fired -- or should have been coaching young people in the first place -- had absolutely nothing to do with it. I think that was a lot of the defense's problem in the trial. They spent too much time focused on Johnson-Klein's issues, playing the blame game, and not nearly enough time showing how it was innocent. It doesn't matter how much blame Johson-Klein deserved. She wasn't the one being sued.

So Johnson-Klein is now the general manager for an arena football team, which is great. She's in charge of putting people in the stands and that's pretty much her specialty. There was -- according to a Lawton, Okla., reporter who was there -- a grand press conference held for Johnson-Klein's introduction. Her celebrity agent was there, the woman who is trying to get her a movie deal. It was a great big production of a press conference that only about three reporters bothered to show up for. It's apparently only in Fresno that Stacy Johnson-Klein has been made into something she's not. Someone of importance.