BAMA BUST Redshirt frosh Jeremy Elder might be wearing pinstripes soon. |
Respect your Elder
I’ve always wondered exactly how these gigantic defensive linemen think they’re going to beat the whole “physical description” aspect of post-felony police work. When you’re 6-3, approaching 300 pounds, a varsity football player in a major-conference football town, and you commit a felony in front of witnesses you leave alive — well, that’s not like having a mustache and shoplifting in downtown Baghdad. I mean, you don’t exactly blend in, and the suspect pool is, shall we say, limited.Which is why it’s surprising that there are five or 10 cases a year of some D-1 school’s varsity linemen committing some preposterously easy-to-solve felony on campus or thereabouts in the middle of the night. We already had a 300-pound tackle trying to inconspicuously shoplift a coat from a Burlington Coat Factory in Arizona this year. Now we have the case of one Jeremy Elder, a redshirt freshman from the University of Alabama who is alleged to have held up two male UA students at gunpoint this past Saturday night.
According to police reports, Elder approached the two men at about 11 pm, flashed a gun, and took an undetermined amount of cash from one of the men. The victims gave a description to police. The next morning, police narrowed down things and questioned Elder. Soon after, we’re talking about first-degree armed-robbery charges. Why a 271-pound man needs to use a gun to commit a robbery — thus increasing his criminal exposure from a mugging to a serious, multi-year felony — is hard to say. Anyway, this joker was then released on $120,000 bond. He will likely remain free for a few months to contemplate his mistake before taking a ride upstate for the next decade or two.
We’ll keep you posted, but this is an early candidate for bad late-night decision of the year. Give him 55 points until further notice . . .
Coffin-corner parking
Dark times for Britton Colquitt, the Tennessee punter who may have drunk his way out of NFL consideration after a textbook leave-the-scene case this past weekend.
Even before this latest incident, Colquitt was a leading candidate to replace Sebastian Janikowski as the Dread Pirate Roberts of troubled college kickers. The son of former Pittsburgh Steeler punter Craig Colquitt and the brother of former Vol All-American Dustin Colquitt, Britton had three alcohol-related arrests in 2004, leading to much-publicized promises of a “new Britton Colquitt” and tearful pledges to try harder to be a role model for kids. (Um, how many kids pick a college punter as a role model?)
He managed to stay clean for three years, but this past weekend Colquitt apparently had two beers and three mixed drinks before getting into a Jeep Cherokee in Knoxville and hitting a parked Ford Focus. He then fled the scene and was later apprehended by police, when he confessed through slurred speech to having hit the car and also to hitting a “tree stump.” The stump has yet to press charges.
