The Dean's List
Welcome to this week's Dean's List where we ponder why the French love Mike Tyson so much. The man has a tattoo around his eye, blew $300 million in two decades and was convicted of raping an 18-year-old girl. Yet, while "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" was greeted with skepticism, Iron Mike still received a standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival after the screening of "Tyson," a documentary of the 41-year-old ex-boxer's life.
• The Dean's List Team of the Week pays a visit to the Hamilton College women's lacrosse team, which captured the Division-III lax championship for the school's first national team title ever. The Continentals beat Franklin & Marshall 13-6 on Sunday for the win, avenging Hamilton's only loss all season (a 14-13 defeat that ended the team's 19-game win streak). As a charter member of the New England Small College Athletic Conference, Hamilton has only been participating in NCAA "team" tournaments for 15 years, but no matter how long it took them, the first is always special.
• What's more important: safe sex or integrity? The Dean's List tends to lean towards safe sex since lack of integrity rarely leads to an STD or hefty child support payments. Accordingly, we're going to put Purdue safety Torri S. Williams on the Honor Roll for "taking precautions". Last week, Williams was charged with shoplifting condoms from a Pay Less Super Market in Lafayette, Indiana. He has been suspended indefinitely from the football team for (get this) "conduct detrimental to the team." So he didn't pay for the condoms, but at least he's using them.
• It's a scientifically proven fact: 20-year-olds are prone to poor judgment. (Otherwise there wouldn't be a Dean's List.) Take, for example, Murray State quarterback Jeff Ehrhardt, whose friend dared him to steal a campus public safety officer's ticket book for 20 bucks. Well, Ehrhardt got that book and a charge for second-degree robbery, which is a felony that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail. Luckily for the 2007 Ohio Valley Conference Freshman of the Year, he was assigned a judge with a sense of humor and the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor. Ehrhardt must complete 20 hours of community service, pay a $178 fine and write a letter of apology to Murray State's Public Safety Department.
• Former Kansas forward Darrell Arthur stinks at math, or so they say. He's been accused of failing multiple math classes in high school. Normally, that's a pretty big deal, but at South Oak Cliff High in Dallas it's not really a problem. If you're a basketball star, just have your principal and basketball coach change your grade as Arthur (allegedly) did after failing algebra his freshman year. Somehow Arthur went from failing to a 70 by the end of the term.
• Included in the long list of things that D-I football recruits should avoid at all costs is dealing drugs. Apparently, that memo didn't reach Peter Rose, 2007 AP Group AA Player of the Year and Virginia Tech's star football recruit. Along with six other Amherst High (Va.) students were caught in an undercover operation, Rose has been charged with two counts of distribution of marijuana and two counts of distribution of drugs within 1,000 feet of a school. During the investigation, drugs were sold from students to informants 18 times, including seven times within 1,000 feet of school property. Maybe he was just trying to live up to his name.
