Tennessee men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl has apologized for an off-the-cuff joke he made about a rural area of the state at a charity fundraiser Thursday, calling it "inappropriate."

Pearl, speaking without notes, was addressing Tennessee Valley Authority employees about the challenges he and his staff face in getting players from diverse backgrounds to play as a team.

"I've got a tough job. I've got to put these guys from different worlds together, right?" Pearl said. "I've got guys from Chicago, Detroit ... I'm talking about the 'hood! And I've got guys from Grainger County, where they wear the hood."

Later Thursday, Pearl issued an apology for the remark, which came in front of television cameras and was aired by WBIR-TV of Knoxville.

"This morning while speaking at a private kick-off event for a great organization that benefits many local charities, I made a statement in jest to describe the diverse group our staff recruits year-in and year-out, " Pearl said.

"Unfortunately while I was trying to excite the crowd and encourage employees to give, I made an inappropriate joke. I certainly did not intend to offend anyone and I apologize to everyone, especially the people of Grainger County.

"In no way am I trying to justify what I said, but I'm disappointed that the focus has been placed on me rather than the charities I was there to help. My only hope is that the visibility of this mistake will encourage those who can to give to those in need during these difficult times.''

But Doug McBee, a Grainger County resident and the father of Tennessee freshman guard Skylar McBee, said Pearl should not be misunderstood, according to The Tennessean of Nashville.

"There's no hard feelings at all,'' Doug McBee said, according to The Tennessean. "We are country up here, but we're not prejudice. It was a joke, and that's how I took it."

REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 26 (UPI) -- U.S. software giant Microsoft said Wednesday it's sorry for superimposing the head of a white man on a black man in a photo on its Polish Web site.

"We apologize and are in the process of pulling down the image," The Times of London reported the company said in an official statement. "We are looking into the details of this situation."

The picture in question involved a stock image of three businesspeople, one white, one black and one Asian, which could be seen in its original form on Microsoft's U.S. Web site. But on the company's Polish site, the same photo showed the head of a white man superimposed on the black man's body, CNET.com reported.

"In this day and age, this is shocking," CNET reported Twitter user Barry McCauley as writing. "Unacceptable."

The Times said Microsoft officials wrote on their official Twitter feed, "Marketing site photo mistake -- sincere apologies -- we are in the process of taking down the image."

NFL QB Michael Vick, who served 23 months in prison for running a dog fighting operation and has now signed with the Philadelphia Eagles, apologizes for a "horrible mistake."

At a news conference, Vick tells reporters that he is making efforts to work with the Humane Society.

"In the past, I made some mistakes, I've done some terrible things," he says. "I made a horrible mistake, Now I want to be part of the solution and not the problem."

On July 17, the California legislature quietly approved a landmark bill to apologize to the state's Chinese-American community for racist laws enacted as far back as the mid–19th century Gold Rush, which attracted about 25,000 Chinese from 1849 to 1852. The laws, some of which were not repealed until the 1940s, barred Chinese from owning land or property, marrying whites, working in the public sector and testifying against whites in court. The new bill also recognizes the contributions Chinese immigrants have made to the state, particularly their work on the Transcontinental Railroad.

"I'm not going to apologize for the way I felt," he told The Times. "What I feel badly about is that I should have been a man and told David how I felt as opposed to telling a reporter.

"David and I will sit down when he gets back and just talk it through. What you don't get from reading a few excerpts and what you do get from reading the whole book is that we all want David to be here. We all want him to succeed, and he wants to succeed.

"Something happened at some point last year where a switch went off, and that's what I want to talk to him about, and we'll figure that out man to man."

Excerpts from Wahl's book were published in Sports Illustrated last week and caused a stir.

"All that we care about at a minimum is that he committed himself to us," Donovan was quoted as saying about Beckham in the book. "As time has gone on, that has not proven to be the case in many ways -- on the field, off the field."