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Black Eye for the Ducks
HFNY
Member Posts: 4,621
No recruit should go there when they may not even survive long enough for a chance at the NFL:
https://yahoo.com/now/2-university-oregon-students-held-015858555.html
https://yahoo.com/now/2-university-oregon-students-held-015858555.html
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Wait that was OSU
Jason Shelley: Case of something going horribly wrong
SPANDE — Nov 8th, 1993
NUT: How could Jason Shelley, an intelligent young man who always seemed to make the right decisions, make such bad decisions after becoming a college football player at Washington?
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
VALLEJO, Calif. -- He was the kid who was perfect, a student, an athlete, a leader. Others might try drugs or challenge the cops, but not Jason Shelley.
He didn't get in trouble. He wouldn't let others get in trouble. Hey, Jason Shelley was going to be a star, going to amount to something, going to make Vallejo High proud, so proud.
"One of the sharpest kids Iever dealt with academically," said Lender Golden, the assistant principal. "Very intelligent, a lot of common sense. And a great football player. I guess people said he could have a career in the pros."
But something has gone horribly wrong. Most of last week Jason Shelley sat in a jail cell in Eugene, Ore., charged with first degree burglary and third degree sexual abuse, waiting until his family could raise the $38,500 bail to set him free.
Three times now in eight months, Jason Shelley, whom some had called potentially the best receiver in University of Washington history, has been been arrested.
In March for a fight during a pickup basketball game on campus.
After an Oct. 3 incident in which he and buddy Prentiss Perkins, another Washington athlete, were charged with obstructing a police officer.
And then last Sunday in Eugene, along with Perkins, a senior on the Huskies basketball team, and Charles Barnes, after allegedly walking into a coed's dorm room at the University of Oregon and exposing themselves.
And while it's true that, as Shelley's attorney in Seattle, Robert Wilson, contends, Jason bas been convicted of nothing, has only been tried in the media and could be exonerated of all charges, it's also true Jason Paul Shelley is a situation that is unenviable. And unforeseen.
Vallejo High is a mosaic of red-roofed, yellow-painted buildings about a mile and a half west of Interstate 80 and 27 miles from the Oakland end of the Bay Bridge. It sits among small homes, residences of the working and Navy people who through the years have been so much a part of the city.
On Saturday, Vallejo met its intracity rival, Hogan High, in football, and the marquee in front of the school proclaimed the preceding days as "Spirit Week." But among the teachers, coaches and students who remember Jason Shelley, spirits were at a low.
"All this stuff," said Vic Chambers, a senior football player, 'it's just not like him. He was always the one who kept me on the right road. If I was heading for trouble, he would take me aside, tell me what to do. When I read about this, I was shocked."
The litany is heard again and again: This can't be happening.
But it is happening, and as Phil and Karen Shelley tried to raise the bail to free the eighth of their 10 children, the little community could not begin to explain why it was happening.
"I deal with discipline," said Lender Golden. "You want to see trouble?" She nodded toward heb office where a policeman was interrogating two students high on marijuana.
"Jason? We never even had a file on him. For anything. He was one of my models, dean for a day. Wore a coat and tie. There are a lot of opportunities here to get in trouble, drugs, guns, the usual. But Jason stayed away from it. Maybe because we had people to run interference for him."
Phil Shelley, the father, played football at Utah State. The family's children all graduaded from Vallejo. Two older brothers, Mevlin and Steve played football. Steve went on to star at Fresno State, then had tryouts with the San Diego Chargers and Edmonton Eskimoes.
Jason was going to go the distance. "He had a real future," said Jack Renfro, head football coach at Vallejo since 1956.
As a true freshman at Washington last year, Shelley caught 20 passes for 382 yards. In the Rose Bowl he caught three more for 100 yards. This year, in four games, he caught 17 for 270 yards.
And then, before Washington played Cal at Berkeley, Shelley was suspended for the situation involving the car. His car. But he wasn't the driver.
Shelley was in the back seat, nursing a beer. A policeman took notice and requested the driver halt. Instead, he stepped on the gas, leading police on a chase near the Washington campus. Shelley refused to identify the driver.
Unable to play or practice the last month, Shelley was restless. Last weekend, with Washington in Arizona, he, Perkins and Barnes drove the 41/2 hours to Eugene. And now his reputation and possible pro career hang by a thread.
There are subplots to this story, many of them.
Upon graduation from Vallejo in June 1992, Shelley signed with the Atlanta Braves, who had selected him in the 20th round of the baseball draft.
"He is a great football player," said one coach at Vallejo, "but nothing as a baseball player. I think his troubles came because he went into baseball and didn't accept a regular grant-in-aid."
Shelley hit .125 in !3 games with the Rookie League Gulf Coast League Braves in the summer of '92. He showed up at Washington wearing a necklace with a dollar sign hanging down. This past summer he played in the Braves' system once again and hit poorly once again.
One administrator at Vallejo said Shelly has a 3month-old daughter, born to his girlfriend, another Vallejo grad.
The Braves gave Shelley a signing bonus of between $5,000 and $10,000 and are also supposed to pay his room and board at Washington. When he arrived late this summer, Shelley apparently was without a room and for a week lifed out of his car.
Bill Wentworth was receivers coach at Washington and helped recruit Shelley. This year Wentworth is head coach at Dennison University in Ohio where one of his assistants is Jason's older brother, Steve.
"I think I'm a pretty good judge of character," said Wentworth. "Jason was a good kid. This doesn't make any sense."
These are questions without answers: When Wentworth and Steve Shelley left Washington, did Jason lose his support group? When Don James quit as head coach, was Jason unable to handle the trauma? Did Jason choose the wrong friends?
"He's always been on the bubble between becoming a thug or going straight," said Jerry Coleman, a coach at Vallejo. "But he always went straight."
Steve Shelley, 26, is suffering for his brother. "I wish I could go through all this for him," said Steve. "But I believe he's innocent. He wouldn't steal. He definitely knows how to treat females. I talked to him in jail. He's hurting. He's #ot the weight of the world on his shoulders."
The incident early last month in the car was going to be removed from the record. In a pretrial diversion with the Seattle city attorney, it was agreed that if Jason had no ferther criminal conduct for 90 days, his penalty would be only a $75 fine.
Almost simultaneously, Washington head coach Jim Lambright made his own agreement with Shelley, the terms of which required Jason not to see Perkins and not to get into additional trouble. If the conditions warrent, Shelley could return to the football team for spring practice.
But Jason Shelley couldn't stay from Perkins or, it's obvious, from trouble.
"I've known Jason since he was 10," said Pat Renfro, wife of the Vallejo football coach. "We saw him grow up. He came from a family of morals and value. Nobody who knows him can believe all this."
Something has gone horribly wrong.