The week in crimes, misdemeanors and eligibility-crippling issues legal, academic, institutional and otherwise.
Where the race for the EDSBS cup of ill repute chugs along with special attention to its early leader, Ohio University of Ohio, SMQ notes the Bobcats' infamy pales in relation to its equivalent in the Championship Subdivision, where in the last year - a time period excluding the coach accused of dealing crystal meth - members or recent former members of the Montana State University football team have enthusiastically stated their independence by allegedly:
- Murdering a suspected cocaine dealer. Ex-MSU player John LeBrum and MSU basketball player Branden Miller were accused last June of attacking a drug dealer as he came out of a restaurant, stuffing him into the trunk of a car, driving him to the school's agronomy farm, shooting him and leaving the body - along with, conveniently enough, a couple .40-caliber shell casings. Investigators also said they found "'pays and owes' sheets related to drug dealing" and the murdered man's ID in the garbage outside Miller's home.
- Selling cocaine to an undercover cop. Former Bobcat Derrick Davis - a cornerback in 2005 and student assistant with MSU last year - was jailed on $20,000 bail last month after a September arrest with ex-teammates Andre Fuller and Edward Sullivan for selling cocaine to an informant.
- Hospitalizing a significant other. The very same Derrick Davis pled guilty last September to an assault that resulted in his girlfriend's ribs being broken. Court records said Davis "was drunk when he punched the woman in the face, dragged her by her hair, knocked her head against a vehicle's dashboard and pinned her to the floor by putting his foot on her throat."
Frankie and Annette's final summer of freedom before a summer job on the ranch resulted in six people and 57 head of cattle dead in ritual slaughter in Missoula.
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Misfortune continued in less violent fashion at Montana State Wednesday, when the program was hit with a suspension of three football scholarships for failing "to attain NCAA academic standards," specifically the Association's Academic Progress Rate, which measures graduation rates. It's the second such suspension levied by the NCAA against MSU in coach Mike Kelly's tenure. Appropriate review and revision procedures, etc. are announced, but parents of the school's homely engineering majors can't be sleeping all that easy.
Making progress, an investigation into the group sex tape scandal that shocked and titilated the University of Cincinnati this week. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, an anonymous letter from "A Concerned Athletic Department Employee" alleged football players and potential recruits violated NCAA legislation passed in 2004 in the wake of the sex-for-recruits scandal at Colorado that outlaws the use of alcohol and/or sex in the recruiting process by videotaping themselves in no doubt vile acts with a former soccer player. A "methodical and thorough" process to sort out the various lascivious facts is underway.
SMQ, like new Bearcat coach Brian Kelly and all very concerned university officials, is shocked - shocked! - that teenagers would engage in such lewd behavior, but then, maybe we just don't get kids today and the shameless, voyeuristic world they live in. (link totally SFW and highly recommended, for the record - ed.)
Speaking of Ohio University of Ohio, two more arrests at an Athens bar late last week prompted a retrospective of the football team's dirty deeds by the Athens News' Jonathan Hunt, who recounted the sour Friday night of freshmen defensive linemen Horace Hubbard amd Ernie Hodge - the former dismissed by Frank Solich after a fifth degree vandalism charge for breaking a bookstore window and "act[ing] drunk and belligerent" with police in the aftermath of an apparent brawl with a "punkish-looking guy" at a Wendy's - before recounting the fourteen arrests of Bobcat football players since January 2006 charges of assault, vandalism, DUI or fleeing (he does not mention, for some reason, equestrian pugilism. Solich his own self, of course, was arrested during 2005 for drunk driving, for which he still claims innocence by way of unknown GHB, but Hunt traces a trend of "lawlessness" back to the teams headed by Solich and Tom Osborne at Nebraska in tedious detail. SMQ encourages readers to try to make the slightest sense of the outraged comments seething in criticism and vague threats over this very good piece of reporting.
How dare you speak in completely factual terms about a (deposed) United States Congressman, sir?
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Lifted, by Steve Spurrier, the heavy-handed suspension of incoming South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia, who spent four excruciating days unable to run or lift weights after an arrest for public drunkenness last weekend. Spurrier "reviewed Stephens' situation" and found - very much in the presumption-of-innocence style of the Ball Coach's nearest approximation in the coaching world, Mike Leach - that situation didn't warrant further discipline. Or, rather, any at all. The Mayor, as might be expected, is appalled.
Well who hasn't hid in an alley and then approached an officer in a threatening manner while zipping his pants up, son? Now watch this putt.
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Charged, after more than four months, Washington running back Michael Houston, who was finally accused Wednesday of a second-degree felony for taking a cab "without permission" (sounds like a plea deal down from full-on theft) and misdemeanor driving under the influence last October. Rumors include Houston, a Texas transfer to begin with, leaving or being booted off the team.
Smash-and-Grab Quickie of the Week
Feb. 18: Domestic battery charge against Hoosiers WR dismissed (AP)
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Have a tip for "The Rap Sheet," stoolie? E-mail SMQ at sundaymorningqb-at-yahoo.cøm to report various nefarious deeds.
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