Football players having sex with coeds, as alleged in Friday’s Sports Illustrated story about Oklahoma State, is not exactly surprising.
But high school football players having sex with coeds? That’s a little different, Melanie Page, the OSU psychology professor quoted by SI, told the Tulsa World on Friday.
"If there is anything you can do to make sure that does not happen at OSU, we are obligated to do it," Page said.
Usually, recruits are 17- or 18-year-olds while OSU’s hostesses are at least two years older -- no freshmen are admitted to the Orange Pride organization. Looking back on my college days (disclosure: I attended OSU in 2003-07), the typical maturity levels of female upperclassmen and high school boys are widely separated.
If recruits were potential transfers, a nontraditional (read: older) member was often assigned to them, said former adviser Betsey Weaver (2005-07).
During Ronni Grigsby’s time in Orange Pride (2007-09), the women in Orange Pride didn’t have in-depth social interaction with the recruits.
"If you can imagine 18-year-old boys or younger, do they want to sit around and talk about what college girls want to talk about? No," Grigsby said Friday. "Most conversations I had were with parents, honestly.
"Sitting with the recruits, sometimes you'd just try to find things to talk about and they would either not respond to you or look at you like you were stupid."
Said Julie Longan, an Orange Pride member in 2005-06: "These are college women that are sophomores or older and high school boys. You never know what’s going on inside people’s heads, but I don’t think I ever would have been going after a high school boy when I was that old."
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