This is a column about the brawls between the Kansas football and basketball teams. To make my point, I&rsquo;m going to start off clarifying my position on rap music. Stick with me; it&rsquo;s all going to make sense.</p><p>If you read my columns, you know I like rap music. I use some of the slang in my writing.</p><p>If you know me personally, you know I&rsquo;m friends or friendly with many of this city&rsquo;s rap artists. You may have seen me out socializing with Tech N9ne, Krizz Kaliko, Big Scoob, Skatterman, Snug Brim and the Rogue Dogg Villians. Rich the Factor and I hang out at the same spot before we hit the casino. I&rsquo;ve never met him, but I think Ron Ron might be Kansas City&rsquo;s breakout mainstream rapper.</p><p>Scoob, Skat, Snug, the RDVs and Rich would all be classified as gangsta rappers. Their music is sexist, violent, filled with stories about drug dealing and laced with the N-word. Scoob has a song with Memphis rappers 8Ball and MJG called &ldquo;Only Know Hard,&rdquo; and it is, in my opinion, one of the best gangsta rap songs ever made.</p><p>My reputation is that I hate and don&rsquo;t get gangsta rap music. I don&rsquo;t hate it, and I definitely get it. I understand its power to corrode values and reinforce negative values of young people.</p><p>I&rsquo;m a grown man. I was raised by two street-smart, employed parents with strong values. I had the support of an older brother, two grandmothers, two uncles, a college-educated stepsister and countless others. As a kid, we moved from the ghetto into a suburban apartment complex. I lived there for nine straight years. My upbringing &mdash; except for my senior year of high school &mdash; was stable, and then I moved to a college campus.</p><p>Rap music entertains me. It does not influence my values. It does not inspire me to adopt the values of gangsta hip-hop culture. My family provided me an unshakable foundation.</p><p>We all know that is not the case for a lot of kids in America. A lot of kids, particularly African-American kids, grow up in unstable environments without the support of two parents. A lot of kids today &mdash; regardless of race &mdash; are raised in front of a television seduced by MTV, BET and VH1. These kids drown out their parents and everyone else by strapping on an iPod and entering their favorite musician&rsquo;s world.</p><p>Gangsta rappers make a living convincing kids that their tales of violence and law-breaking are authentic and a reflection of how real black men should carry themselves. Listening to rap music is not like watching a movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn&rsquo;t want a kid to believe he&rsquo;s the Terminator in real life. He wants kids to believe he&rsquo;s a good actor.</p><p>OK, how does all of this relate to the brawls between Kansas basketball and football players?</p><p>In pursuit of victories, Bill Self and Mark Mangino have both been recruiting more kids from tough backgrounds. I am not vilifying either coach or the kids they&rsquo;re bringing to campus. I&rsquo;m stating an obvious fact. Jacque Vaughn and Sherron Collins have two distinct personalities.</p><p>From all the reports I&rsquo;ve read and a conversation I had Thursday with a former KU football player, the feud between the basketball and football teams has been ongoing for at least two years. It&rsquo;s not typical college stuff, guys fighting over girlfriends.</p><p>A typical college brawl transpires at a bar or a party and alcohol is usually involved. When groups collide at 10 a.m. in the middle of campus, that sounds like gang activity. I&rsquo;m not calling the basketball and football teams gangs. I&rsquo;m saying some of the kids are mimicking the behavior of gangs.