Norm deserves an apology? For what? Because he got three down votes in the last two pages of a thread (hardly the "slew" you called it)? Or because your feelings got hurt when you mistakenly thought the thread got deleted?
And the guy who made a trans joke that used a person's dead name says we need to get our "focus back on the Huskers" and not on social issues. That's rich. You're mad at people for down voting "any social issue they disagree with" and not "focus(ing) on basketball," but where's the anger at the initial posts about social issues that engendered the votes? Those aren't focused on basketball, and they came before any votes were cast (either up, down, or otherwise). It seems more likely that you aren't mad that people aren't sticking to basketball, but that they're expressing non-support of social ideas you (and/or Norm, apparently) do support (i.e. the idea of not wanting to hire a basketball coach accused of domestic assault).
Because you are weirdly concerned about why people get down votes, I'll save you some confusion: I hit you with one on the trans joke post (that had nothing to do with Husker basketball and everything to do with a social issue) not because I think you are an "idiot, troll, or a Husker hater"; it was because I found it to be a shitty joke done in poor taste.