Sports blotter: Harvard football edition
By MATT TAIBBI | July 19, 2006
Los lobos locos
The last pre-training-camp days of summer are always a bad time for collegiate and pro-football arrests. As players see the ugly specter of “two-a-days” on the horizon, the urge to pound four whiskies and climb into the Escalade in search of a 3 am pole dance becomes unbearably strong. So in June and late July, we get alcohol-related arrests not in twos or threes, but in big bunches.
THE FALLEN: After he was arrested 10 times as a juvenile, we had high hopes for Willie Williams. Now he’s asking out of Miami. |
This year has been par for the course, with our own Harvard University getting in on the action. Harvard has had a tough year. Earlier this spring, it lost two football players, Danny Lane and James R. Velissaris, when the pair was suspended following an alcohol-related confrontation with a shuttle driver. Harvard experienced more than boys-will-be-boys party excess this June, however, when team captain Matthew Thomas was arrested for assault after allegedly breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s Currier House room and driving his knee into her chest. Thomas, who allegedly was drunk after a night at the Senior Soirée, is due in court this week. The Crimson also had a weed-related suspension in the fall when a player named Russ Schoeber was busted for possession. Sports crime at Harvard: next thing you know, Florida State wide receivers will start studying on Saturday nights.Speaking of the SEC, the Auburn Tigers took care of their requisite summer alcohol-related arrest when cornerback Montae Pitts was arrested for a DUI late last month; coach Tommy Tuberville is apparently undecided about what action he will take with regard to the fifth-year senior (read: he wants to see how his defensive backfield looks in August practice). Meanwhile, a rising star on the school’s basketball squad, junior guard Frank Tolbert, was busted at an Alabama bar last week for being a minor in possession of an alcoholic beverage (i.e., being a college student).
The loudest recent football arrest took place in New Mexico, where a pair of players from University of New Mexico’s Lobos team was jailed for disorderly conduct and refusal to obey a police order after a nightclub disagreement spun out of control. Linebacker Herbert Felder and safety Blake Ligon were busted for being pains in the ass while boozing at a club in downtown Albuquerque. Apparently Ligon got in a fight with a bouncer inside the club, and a second bouncer called police for help; when cops arrived, both football players were making spectacles of themselves. “While Blake was walking around the club, he was yelling, cursing, throwing his hands in the air and stomping his feet,” the police report read. Felder, too, shouted and cursed in the face of police officers in front of about 100 onlookers (football crowds are smaller in New Mexico). Police put up with this for a short while before dousing the two idiots with pepper spray and tossing them in the clink. Head coach Rocky Long says the team will “go through the legal process” with both players.
Related:
Willie returns, Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, Catch a falling star, More 
- Willie returns
Remember Willie Williams?
- Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
Kevin Rafferty's 40th-anniversary documentary about the fabled Game of 1968 — when both teams were unbeaten and Harvard, after being completely outplayed by the 16th-ranked Elis, scored 16 points in the final 42 seconds to "win" — has no designs on being innovative: contemporary interviews with the players are intercut with slightly fuzzy but quite acceptable footage of the game.
- Catch a falling star
There was a time, not long ago, when two things were true. The first was that the University of Miami was a perennial college-football powerhouse. The second was that Willie Williams was going to be the next big thing among college-football linebackers.
- Wigging out
Git yer Mel Kiper Jr. wigs out; it’s time again for the NFL draft.
- A leafy, green substance
Just when you thought the “supernaturally large quantity of marijuana” sports bust was a thing of the past.
- The storm kings
If you’re a Rhode Island TV news outlet, you certainly don’t hide your Doppler under a bushel.
- Return of the U
Remember the days when the University of Miami dominated college football?
- Skell of the year
Much less funny than usual, was 2007.
- Do mess with Texas
The Houston Texans are like the soy cheese of the sporting world.
- Pimping ain't easy
The funniest thing, of course, is that, in college, he played for a team called the Beavers .
- Crime without verbs
It’s getting to the point where you can write these sports-crime stories without verbs.
- Less
Topics:
Sports
, Swearing and Invective, Sports, Harvard University, More
, Swearing and Invective, Sports, Harvard University, National Football League, AFC East Division, American Football Conference, Football, Professional Football, Law Enforcement, National Collegiate Athletic Association, Less
