LISTINGS |  EDITOR'S PICKS |  NEWS |  MUSIC |  MOVIES |  DINING |  LIFE |  ARTS |  REC ROOM |  CLASSIFIED
        
News

We bombed in Denton

Sports blotter: "Complaining about the refugees" edition
February 21, 2007 4:46:05 PM

07209_blotter_main1
HOWARD STIRGUS: just wanted to play in a basketball game and didn’t know the cops could trace 911 calls.

Anybody visiting southeast Texas these days is likely to hear a lot of grumbling about “those people” — the ones who came over from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. It’s a hot topic on the local right-wing radio stations and fast becoming its own chapter in the history of subterranean American racism, offering a rich legacy of loaded code words: “We’re happy to help, but enough is enough,” “Some people are just happy mooching off the government,” “I don’t want to say all people from New Orleans are criminals, but . . . ”

Denton, Texas, isn’t exactly prime NOLA refugee country — it’s just north of Dallas — but a recent news story coming out of that town is probably not going to help the refugee lore situation very much. An emerging high-school basketball star named Howard Stirgus was busted last week for phoning in over a dozen bomb threats to one of his team’s games. Stirgus was under suspension for that game for fighting in school, and apparently thought he could get the game postponed until such time as he could play in it. His plan failed; authorities evacuated the gym, found no bomb, and eventually arrested him on the night of the game.

Stirgus is from New Orleans. Until the arrest, he was considered a solid D-1 prospect, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out for him now. “I don't think any Division I school would take a chance,” said Mike Kunstadt, publisher of the basketball Web site Texashoops.com. Among other things, the execution of his plan does not exactly inspire confidence in his ability to handle college academics. Stirgus made the 911 calls from a cell phone he had borrowed from a teammate, apparently not realizing they could be traced by police.

Most news reports characterize Stirgus as a very nice kid who has not dealt with the stress of moving and being away from family very well. And this isn’t a case of a dumb jock brutalizing a woman or some poor sap who happened to be standing in the wrong place at a bar on some Saturday night; at the heart of this story, it’s just a kid who wanted to play in a basketball game. Let’s hope he gets a second chance…

Buckeye black eye
2007 hasn’t been a good year for the OSU football team so far. First they got stomped by Florida; now they’ve got their first football bust of the year. Defensive lineman Kris Luchsinger was arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after being busted for what sounds very much like one of those big-football-player-whales-on-unlucky-sap-in-bar stories.

According to reports, police arrived at Jackie O’s tavern, in Athens, Ohio, in response to a call about a fight. When the cops walked into the place, there was indeed a fight going on and the police ordered it stopped. For a moment everyone was in order, but then, according to police, the 6’3”, 225-pounds Luchsinger grabbed another male and started hitting him. Police ordered him to stop, but Luchsinger kept punching the man until police grabbed him. Luchsinger — a former high-school wrestling standout — wrestled with cops for about 30 seconds before breaking free and attempting to escape down an alley in the direction of a Taco Bell. I wonder if Luchsinger’s coaches are going to be impressed with the way he “filled the alley” on that play.

Eventually, police subdued him and brought him in under second- and fourth-degree misdemeanor charges. The Buckeyes announced a new code of conduct in September after a rash of serious arrests involving current and former OSU players (the most notable of these involving the hatchet-carrying Maurice Clarett), so the Luchsinger case is the first non-traffic offense pinned on a football player since that new code was released.

I’m giving Luchsinger 18 points out of 100; this just sounds like another big, drunk jock story, a kiddie-plate Jumbo Elliott tale that ended with no broken bones.

Dishonorable Elijah
We baseball geeks — and since the Pats lost, that’s what we’ve been here in Boston — tend to read a lot of prospect guides and minor-league newsletters, just to see how close the likes of Clay Buchholz and Bryce Cox are to actually helping the hometown faithful. And those of us who are geeks of that sort know that the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have the best farm system in baseball, talent-wise. Their minor-league teams are also becoming the Cincinnati Bengals of baseball, with a number of arrests involving high-profile prospects in recent years.

I bring this up only to give some ink to a terrific quote coming our way from Elijah Dukes, a D-Rays outfield prospect who is one of the top talents in the minors. Dukes got busted last month on a pot-possession charge; he’d already been arrested five times previously on charges that included battery and assault. When police stopped and searched him in his 2006 Charger following a “loud-music violation,” dope dogs found a little weed baggie.

Dukes’s answer: “You’re going to arrest me for a little sack of weed?”

I’m with Elijah on this one. If the government intends to continue arresting every young, horny athlete who smokes weed, my taxes are never going to go down. Frankly, I’d rather keep the money. Dukes gets half a point on the 100 scale. The tally this year:

LaVon Chisley, Penn State: Murder 99
Six Football Players, Guilford: Assault 50 (downgraded)
Kat. Maekawa Orix, Buffaloes: DUI, Hit/run 47
Lionel Sullivan, BGSU: stealing video games, being a dumbass 31
Dax Crum, ASU: DUI 30
Mike Tyson, n/a: Coke, DUI 28
Rashaun Broadus, BYU hoops: DUI, having Snoop Dogg's last name 26
Ryan Krause, Chargers: DUI 25
Dontrelle Willis, Marlins: DUI, peeing 23
Minny PD, n/a: tasering 20
Kris Luchsinger, OSU: Bar fighting 18
Mobile PD, n/a: being dicks 5
Howard Stirgus, Denton: Bomb threats 3
Kyle McLarney, Notre Dame: weed possession 1
Elijah Dukes, Tampa Bay: Weed; being black and not giving a fuck 0.5

COMMENTS

No comments yet. Be the first to start a conversation.

Login to add comments to this article
Email

Password




Register Now  |   Lost password



MOST POPULAR

 VIEWED   EMAILED 

ADVERTISEMENT

BY THIS AUTHOR
PHOENIX MEDIA GROUP
CLASSIFIEDS







TODAY'S FEATURED ADVERTISERS
   
Copyright © 2007 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group