SOONERGUYS Blog

 

 Mike’s Rant

Norman’s finest arrested TE Jermaine Gresham this week for failing to pay a seat belt ticket.  Our fair city is a safer place today, now that justice has been served.

It cost Gresham $349 dollars.  It cost the Norman Police Department the expense of who knows how many squad cars, tactical team members and planning meetings necessary to catch this menace.  Not to mention the loss to IHOP because these policemen had to miss their morning donuts.

OK, OK. That donut comment was about as fair as … oh, maybe singling out someone who happens to be an OU football player for not paying a misdemeanor traffic ticket — something that I’ve never before seen or heard happening to anyone else in Norman.

Maybe we should ask local criminals to quit being lazy and get out there and burgle or something, so our police force won’t have so much idle time on their hands .  Pretty soon police will start arresting people for  failure to move their garbage polycarts from the curb after trash pickup.

 

Uh, which reminds me….I’ll be right back.

 

On the other hand:  Come on, Jermaine. Ask Corey Wilson about wearing seatbelts, dude.

 

The Longhorns have had 10 players arrested for all sorts of criminal conduct this year, but that fact did not stop an assistant athletic director from trying to suppress the student newspaper’s reporting that backup QB John Chiles was a suspect in an Austin police investigation into an assault.  

Assistant AD John Bianco wrote threatening emails to the Daily Texan, claiming its reports of public statments made by the Austin Police Department were “untruthful”, and further stating the Texan’s relationship with the football program would be hurt.  Bianco said that when potential employers of the student newsmen would learn of the reporting it would “hurt you in the long run,” the newspaper editor reported.

Of course many Texas fans probably think the student paper is wrong for reporting any wrongdoing by its elite athletes.  And one can question whether reporting that someone who has not been arrested is a “suspect” is a good idea or not; but, the big bad athletic department trying to coerce student journalists from reporting a fact about something which is of great public interest is far worse. 

I imagine the folks in Austin are bit testy about their public image right now.  They have probably seen too many of those t-shirts floating around the rest of the conference showing the broken longhorns in handcuffs.  — Mike