Hope springs a leak with Jarboe
Published: 8/13/2008 11:52 PM
Last Modified: 8/13/2008 11:52 PM
So now we know where Josh Jarboe is getting a third crack at college football -- Troy University. The Oklahoma Sooners provided the first two when they signed him, then admitted him despite the fact he showed up at his high school with a pistol tucked in his pants.
Now comes number three, for a kid who is yet to so much as practice with a college team. You read the statement from Troy coach Larry Blakeney? All that stuff about mistakes and second chances and being a productive contributor to the team and the community?
Gee, wonder where we've seen that before. Oh yeah. Bob Stoops. Last May 31 to be exact. When he stuck his neck out on the kid's behalf. What did it get the OU coach in return? A really lousy rap video, and his reputation at such risk that he cut his losses with (supposedly) one of the nation's top young wide receivers.
I would highly suggest Blakeney take a look at something Matt Taibbi wrote for the Boston Phoenix after Jarboe's stolen gun-on-school property arrest last March. It's something Stoops should have read carefully before bringing Jarboe to Norman two months later.
"'This isn’t fixin’ to stop me,' crowed a defiant Josh Jarboe, the University of Oklahoma football recruit who this past year was ranked the 10th-best high-school wide receiver prospect in the country by the scouting Web site rivals.com. Jarboe was all over the news this past week, sounding like a man put up on the cross as a martyr, and no wonder — he had just been arrested, and for what? For bringing a loaded, unregistered, stolen gun to school! As if the police don’t have anything better to do...
“Someone should do a study on this, but there definitely seems to be a correlation between getting busted on gun charges and failing to live up to athletic potential. Almost inevitably, the guys who have everything going for them and still find a need to bring guns to school, or Burger King, or on board a passenger airplane, or to places where they don’t need them — those guys seem to flame out early, for some reason, or become terminal headaches for their coaches."
-- Guerin Emig
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
