Lawrence Phillips dead .. suicide

Heaven my ass.

 

A colossal dumbass, wire to wire.
So one bonus point for consistency.

 

I hate to see anyone go like this but he did seem like he had no redeeming qualities, off the field at least.

 

Coach Osbourne weighs in: “You know, he made some mistakes and had some negatives, but he also wasn’t quite the evil person that some people might think he was.’’

Tom Osborne remembers Lawrence Phillips: He wasn't evil

Enablers gonna enable.

 

Was Ozzy coaching Nebraska?

 

This article by Lars Anderson, last year after Phillips killed his cellmate, was quite good. Explained without excusing.

According to several former Nebraska coaches, McEwen was Phillips' first true love. "Lawrence has major abandonment issues, especially when it comes to females because of how he was treated by his mother," said a former Nebraska staffer. "He was never given the proper counseling to develop coping mechanisms when he's put in a high-stress situation. And when he got the call in the middle of the night, he just lost it."

...

In 1987, Phillips' mother, Juanita, invited her boyfriend to stay in their home in Inglewood, California. Lawrence and the boyfriend bickered constantly—the boyfriend allegedly abused Lawrence, according to Jason Cole, then writing for the Sun Sentinel—and Lawrence began to run away from home and skip school.

State officials eventually intervened and placed Lawrence in a foster home. After living there for only two weeks, he was transferred toMacLaren Hall, a juvenile detention center straight out of a child's worst nightmare, a place where abuse was allegedly rampant, according to Carla Rivera of the Los Angeles Times.


Phillips' Demons Beat His Angels

So, yeah, he turned out to be a horrible person. But he had a lot of help getting there.

 

Sports Illustrated did that "Best Team I Ever Covered" Series a few years. The 1995 Nebraska entry -- a tribute to a team that averaged 52.4 points per before annihilating Florida in the Fiesta Bowl -- still sticks with me.

Tim Layden: 1995 Nebraska Cornhuskers crushed all comers en route to title

"The Cornhuskers were not just good, they were a scary, villainous, black-hatted machine."

Phillips had competition for the biggest offender. Christian Peter was arrested EIGHT TIMES while in school and accused by at least two women of sexual assault.

We'll always remember that team, just not for all the right reasons.

 

Peter has at least cleaned up and admitted to a lot of his transgressions.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...-patriots-giants-rape-kathy-redmond/20502967/

 

Honestly, I don't think Tom Osborne ever got over losing that Orange Bowl game to Schnellenberger and Miami, then after the 'Canes dominated college football with a succession of renegades, he decided he was going to build a team with the baddest MFers who ever played college football and see how the competition liked it.

 

He should rest easy, knowing that going for two in that game was the probably the ballsiest move in college football history.

 

He died doing what he loved.