Imus needs to sincerely apologize to Rutgers players

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All right Don Imus, I hate to break it to you. Saying you're "embarrassed" isn't going to cut it.

You stole the joy of the Rutgers women's basketball team. This lame backtracking, this sorry series of public apologies is not enough. You've offered to meet with the Rutgers team and now they've accepted. When you finally say you're sorry in person you need to take it step further. You need to get to know them.

You need to chase down super-speedy, super-funny Matee Ajavon. You need to look at the junior point guard -- whose mother cleaned houses until she had enough money to bring Matee and her sisters over from Liberia -- and tell her why you called her a "nappy-headed ho."

You need to go up to Myia McCurdy, a science-whiz and former Girl Scout, and tell her why you called her and her teammates "some rough girls." You need to face Essence Carson, who last summer lost the grandmother who raised her, plays five instruments, writes poetry and is a USA Basketball regular, and tell her why you laughed when Sid Rosenberg said the team looked "exactly like the Toronto Raptors."

You need to seek out Dee Dee Jernigan, whose mother died of cancer last spring and who now has no home and no family other than these young women you mocked ... and explain why it was "funny" to mock them.

This Rutgers women's basketball team is full of real people. Eight of the 10 players are African-American and five are just freshmen. They took a horrid 2-4 start and a humiliating thumping by Duke and turned it into a thrilling, giant-slaying run. They did it on behalf of New Jersey, carrying the banner of the very state that you call home.

And when you decided to run with producer Bernard McGuirk's calling the Scarlet Knights "hardcore hos" the morning after these Cinderellas finally fell to Tennessee in the NCAA title game, well then, you turned them into cartoon characters.

If Imus knew anything about these girls, he'd realize saying "they have tattoos" was silly -- only one player has a tattoo, center Kia Vaughn. It's a basketball and her name in cursive. She covers it up when she plays.