We have a Willie Williams sighting! Rivals.com recently tracked down Williams and found that he will play out his final year of college football eligibility at Glenville State in West Virginia. If you can find Glenville State without the help of our good friends at Google it might be time to get a life.
At this point, most will no longer remember the great and stupid Willie Williams. His story bears mentioning though as it is both terrific and terrible all at the same time.
You have to go back to high school to understand the outrageous ride Willie has been on for the last five years. So where to start exactly with this guy? How about with some stats?
- Willie Williams was a Parade High School All-American and received dozens of scholarship offers from major college football programs. He was perhaps the most heavily recruited player in his class.
- Willie Williams was arrested 11 times before he ever sat foot on a college campus. ELEVEN TIMES. ELEVEN!
The Terrelle Pryor's of the world that are no longer being whisked around the country on private jets, being put up in nice hotels, and generally treated like visiting heads of state have only Willie Williams to thank for ruining the good time they missed out on. It was Willie's recruiting diaries that appeared in the Miami Herald that finally forced the NCAA to address the outrageous behaviour schools were displaying when it came to big-time recruits.
You can no longer find the actual Miami Herald diaries online to my knowledge but you can find subsequent stories by, among others, the New York Times. Here's a sample:
''Dinner was tight,'' he told The Herald. ''The lobster tail was like $49.99. I couldn't believe something so little could cost so much. The steak didn't even have a price. The menu said something about market value. I was kind of embarrassed so I didn't order a lot. But then I saw what the other guys were ordering, I was like, 'Forget this.' I called the waiter back and told him to bring me four lobster tails, two steaks and a shrimp scampi.''
The uber-recruit also made a trip to Gainesville which was fairly uneventful. That is, if you consider punching a guy in the face in a nightclub, hugging a girl that would later file a criminal complaint and discharging fire extinguishers in a dorm uneventful. Willie was subsequently charged with those crimes which he was able to tally on his underage offenses tote board next to his bunkbed.
Personally, given the number of fire extinguishers I've unloaded, I have to cry BS on that one. Fire codes are just screaming out to be violated aren't they? I park my car in front of alarmed exits sometimes just for fun. Don't you?
Not surprisingly, Willie received the best treatment from his hometown school, and later opted to matriculate there as opposed to his other suitors. Another sample from the NY Times:
He was given a room at the Mayfair House Hotel in Coconut Grove -- it was called the Paradise Suite and had a Jacuzzi on the balcony -- and was ferried around in the Cadillac Escalade belonging to the head coach, Larry Coker. ''When I saw he was driving the Escalade,'' Mr. Williams said in his diary, ''I was like, 'Dang, coach got some taste.'
When the recruits left for a tour of Miami's stadium, the Orange Bowl, they blazed through traffic lights with a police escort. Even the Miami coaches had been reading Mr. Williams's diaries; knowing his fondness for seafood, they were ready with shrimp and crab claws.
Needless to say, Willie Williams is to horrendous overindulgence of high school recruits what Jackie Robinson was to pro baseball, in a bizarre and ridiculous way. Following the publication of Williams' recruiting diaries, the NCAA stepped in a created strict rules about what can and can't be done around these 'official' visits.
There are no more private planes, no more police escorts, and you can't even put a guy's name on the locker you hope he will habitate or on the scoreboard you hope he will light up. It's gotten a lot more vanilla, which is not a bad thing in my opinion.
Incredibly, that's only half the story.
Willie Williams (did I mention that's a great name?) committed to Miami University, his hometown school. He played in a several games but never came close to living up to the hype during his first year.
He was labeled a "third-string linebacker" by head coach Larry Coker just before his second season and subsequently transfered to West Los Angeles Community College. After a season at good ol' WLACC he moved on to the University of Louisville and brand new coach Steve Kragethorpe (sp?). He played in three games there.
Then it was an arrest for marijuana possession. The LPD's finest caught Willie eating the rest of his dub sack, which is gross. Weed smells nice wafting through the room. It tastes like peet moss in between your mandibles.
So now it's Division II Glenville State for Mr. Williams. The next time you want to piss and moan and rail over the school of choice of a high-profile recruit, remember what Willie Willams was and what is he is. Nada.
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