Too high
One wonders, at times, if there is some kind of Norse God of sports crime — some half-drunken minor deity, ejected from Valhalla for arson and zooerasty, allowed to keep his job on a probationary basis while living in a men’s shelter in Oslo.
Most days he busies himself getting Sean Williams baked and booking Atlanta hotel suites for Otis Nixon — easy work, even for a wasted Norse flunky. But sometimes you get a week when you have to indict Mike Vick on dogfighting charges, and all the logistics and hand-wringing and letters from Peta get to be too much, and so you start to get a little sloppy. No other way to explain what we saw in Ames, Iowa, earlier this month — when a one-time Iowa State quarterback known as “T-High” was busted for dealing heroin.
T-High, better known as Terrence Highsmith, was a backup quarterback and punt returner for ISU from 2004 to 2005. A JUCO transfer from someplace called Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Highsmith threw exactly one pass in his D-I career, a seven-yard out late in a 49-3 blowout of Illinois State in ’05. He was arrested earlier this month in Ames, when police there raided an apartment and found T-High and a woman named Monica Irving with a middling 5.5 grams of H. He was charged with possession and intent to deliver.
Ames police chief Jim Robinson suggested that there might be more arrests in connection with Highsmith’s case. “This is probably something that is not the norm,” he said mysteriously. No word yet on whether Highsmith is going to change his nickname before trial.
Bad Gophers
In other disgraceful Midwest college-football news, four players at Patriots running back Laurence Maroney’s alma mater, the University of Minnesota, have been dismissed by Gophers coach Tim Brewster for their alleged involvement in a rape that is said to have taken place on campus back in April.
Brewster suspended three players — running back E.J. Jones, defensive end Alex Daniels, and defensive back Keith Massey — from the team following the incident. When new evidence emerged that led to the arrest of a fourth, cornerback Dominic Jones, Brewster decided to punt the whole quartet. All four were allegedly involved in an incident with a woman who had been binge-drinking on campus and had an astonishing blood-alcohol level of 0.30 percent. Dominic Jones (no relation to E.J. Jones, though, confusingly, Dominic is the half-brother of Massey) allegedly had non-consensual sex with the drunk woman while Daniels filmed them on a cell phone.
Moreover, the party where the assault took place was allegedly organized by another former Minnesota football player named Robert McField. McField had previously been kicked off the team when it came to light that he had two felony armed-robbery convictions in St. Louis. McField has since begun serving prison time for his robbery counts.
Media reports indicate that it was McField who brought the victim and her friend to the party, and that it was McField who gave the woman eight consecutive shots of vodka. There is also some confusion as to why McField was living in campus housing despite being kicked out of school back in November.
Police hesitated to file charges until forensic specialists restored the video clip from Daniels’s phone. The video had been deleted, but police managed to reconstruct enough of it to see that the woman was unresponsive and incapable of giving consent.
Meanwhile, Brewster issued what may go down as one of the great understatements in the annals of sports crime: “The conduct alleged in this case does not reflect the expectations and aspirations that the university has for its student-athletes.” So you don’t want your football players committing violent gun crimes or plying chicks with spud juice and then taking turns having sex with them, with or without their consent? Wow, glad he cleared that up.
This is one of the uglier cases to come up this year — Jones earned himself a 90 on the crime score. Regarding McField and the other three, let’s wait until charges are filed . . .
Husker did
Meanwhile, out in Lincoln, Nebraska, a big-time wide receiver has quietly been murdering his NFL draft status with a series of arrests leading, now, to an opening-day suspension.
In what has been a really shitty week for college administrators in fly-over football states, the Nebraska Cornhuskers announced that star wideout Maurice Purify will miss the team’s opening game after being arrested twice in the space of a month. Purify, the Huskers’ receiving-yardage leader in 2006, was busted on May 5 for a myriad of charges, including assault and trespassing resulting from a fight at a bar. In early June, he was pulled over and charged with suspicion of DWI after failing to signal. As a result of the charges, Purify was given one year of probation and fined $1250. Look for these arrests to be mentioned by ESPN analyst Mel Kiper Jr. exactly 4396 times between now and next April’s pro draft.
