So much for Mack's spiel about only recruiting "good kids who graduate." The story is pretty funny though. Two Longhorns face misdemeanor charges Student says football players confronted him outside Jester Center By Suzanne Halliburton AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Tuesday, October 28, 2003 For the second time this month, Longhorns football players stand accused of misdemeanor criminal charges. University of Texas Police have charged backup quarterback Matt Nordgren with criminal mischief and starting cornerback Cedric Griffin with interference with an emergency telephone call after a student accused the pair of confronting him outside a university dormitory last month. Both offenses are Class A misdemeanors punishable by up to a $4,000 fine and one year in jail. Last week, Austin police charged the team's starting running back, Cedric Benson, with a Class A misdemeanor of criminal trespassing amid accusations that he forced open a South Austin apartment door earlier this month in search of a stolen television set. Coach Mack Brown suspended Benson for Saturday's game against Baylor, but he is back with the team this week. On Tuesday, Brown said he planned to speak with men's athletics director Deloss Dodds about the new accusations. "I'll get the information that's available — I don't have any right now — and go from there," Brown said. Griffin and Nordgren declined to comment through a team spokesman. The charges against Griffin and Nordgren, who are roommates, stem from an incident that occurred about 3:30 a.m. on Sept. 21, about four hours after Texas beat Rice 48-7 in Houston. An arrest warrant affidavit filed by UT police says the incident started when the two football players pulled a Lexus sport utility vehicle behind Jonathan Allen's parked Volkswagen at Jester Center. Allen, a 21-year-old senior majoring in physics, told police he was sitting in the car waiting for a friend when the football players flashed their lights at him, pulled up beside his car and yelled at him to get out. Griffin and Nordgren are quoted in the affidavit as saying, "You want to get out of the car? You want to take this outside?" According to the document, Allen, who said Tuesday that he did not know what prompted the altercation, told them he was waiting for a girl, who then arrived and got into his car. Allen told police that as he began to leave, Nordgren got of the Lexus, which is registered to Nordgren's parents, and kicked the rear of his car, causing at least $900 in damage. When Allen tried calling police, Griffin reached into the Volkswagen and knocked the phone from his hand, according to the court documents. The police affidavit stated that the student believed he was in "fear of imminent assault" from Griffin. Accoring to the affidavit, Griffin then got into the driver's seat of the Lexus and drove off, picking up Nordgren shortly thereafter. Arrest warrants for the two were issued Oct. 10. The charges came to light Tuesday when Allen contacted the American-Statesman. Because the charge is a misdemeanor and investigators consider neither Nordgren nor Griffin a flight risk, University of Texas Police Department Lt. Ron Stalder said the court would issue a summons for the players to appear instead of serving the warrant. A court official said the summons would likely be served this week. Allen said he did not know Griffin or Nordgren but knew they were UT football players judging by their garb. "They were both wearing bright orange UT jumpsuits," he said. "I just looked them up on the roster and then looked them up on the directory." Allen, who filed a report with police following the incident, said his $500 cell phone was severely damaged and that he would have to pay for a rental car while his Volkswagen was being fixed, which could take more than a week. He said he unsuccessfully tried to get Nordgren and Griffin to pay for these expenses before pressing formal charges. Allen said he has spoken with Nordgren several times since the incident. During one of those conversations, Allen said, Nordgren told him that on the night of the altercation he was upset that he did not see any time on the field hours earlier in the blowout victory over Rice. Recounting one of the conversations, Allen said Nordgren told him, "We had just got back from the game, and I thought I should've gotten to play." Griffin played in the game, making three tackles. A 20-year-old sophomore, Griffin is tied for 12th on the team in tackles with 27. Nordgren, a 21-year-old sophomore and third-string quarterback, has played in five games, competing 1 of 2 passes for six yards.
It was a special physics major plan; unlimited weekend minutes and full 3D solutions to the time-dependent Dirac equation.
Starting cornerback Cedric Griffin and reserve quarterback Matt Nordgren will be in uniform for Saturday's football game against Nebraska, Texas head coach Mack Brown announced after Wednesday's practice. University of Texas police charged Nordgren with criminal mischief after he and Griffin were involved in an altercation with a UT student that occurred about 3:30 a.m. on Sept. 21, four hours after Texas beat Rice 48-7 in Houston. Griffin was charged with interfering with an emergency phone call. Both charges are Class A misdemeanors punishable by up to a $4,000 fine and one year in jail. Brown said he spoke with the players and said there were "differing accounts of the event and the surrounding circumstances." "We feel confident about their side of the story," he said. "They will continue to practice and they will play Saturday. We feel the legal part of this will take care of itself and if there comes a time for discipline, we will handle it in house." Brown declined to discuss specifics of the case but said Griffin and Nordgren have cooperated fully with campus authorities. He added that disciplinary action has been taken within the team's rules. Last week, junior tailback Cedric Benson sat out the Baylor game after being charged with criminal trespassing. Benson rejoined the team Tuesday and will play Saturday. http://www.statesman.com/horns/content/horns/football/2003/1030texnotes.html
He needs to make a diagram cause I don't see how/why Nordgren and Griffin would get into it with him. If he was blocking the road, couldn't they go around him?
Baqui99, Thanks for the link. That's hilarious. I know that guy is the victim and everything, if what he is saying is true, but his letter to the public is ridiculous. He does make some good points about not being a coward and not being afraid of the popular opinion, but what was the deal with the physics formula and what it has to do with his study buddy's mispelled shirt? I'll be interested to hear the other side of the story.
LMAO at that link. I can't believe that's for real. There has to be another side to this. It seems sort of random. I doubt he was just sitting in his car and all this happened. Anyway he does sound like a ***.
Did he and the football guys already know each other? It sort of sounds that way. Anyway, I'm afraid he's not going to get much sympathy with a long, overblown letter (a short one would have been much better), especially when it's full of physics formulas. Like a geek stereotype. Most of us learned by middle school to limit how much geekiness we showed to the public.
That link is hilarious. Some of the stuff that this Allen kid says is "Pure Gold (Jerry, it's pure gold!)". Such as: "We're talking about a 2000 kg object that can move at > 3 m/s...." Or "Say I acted with agog..." But the best one is this gem: "I'll point out to you that you blatantly missed the fact that in the einstein field equations, for simplicity, G (the newtonian gravitation constant, not the field tensor) is set to 1, so the equation should read G (subscripts of alpha and beta) = 8piT(subscripts of alpha and beta)..." I feel sorry that the guy had to go through this because no one deserves that, not even the biggest egghead in the world (which is obviously this guy), but I don't think he is helping his cause by talking like he is from a different planet compared to the rest of us. ROTFLMAO
