Under/Over on times Lizzy Seeberg and Declan Sullivan will be mentioned

Good pull on those details.

I was recalling the "touching of the breasts" from the official report, if I recall, that the reporter mentions in that piece.

 

Even if the local prosecutor refused to take it up as a criminal matter, surely ND - the school or the football program - could've taken it up as a violation of its vaunted "honor code."

honorcode.nd.edu/the-honor-code/

 

There would be no over/under because the probability of her mention is so unlikely that it wouldn't be profitable for a sportsbook to take action on it.

Let's not kid ourselves, this has happened, happens, and will keep happening at a lot of places, including Notre Dame. And it is just as disgusting the thousandth time it happens each year as it is the first time.

 

True.

But ND sells itself not only as a certain kind of high-end academic experience, but as an institution with a higher moral purpose and standard than most. On that basis, it's fair to judge its hypocrisies more harshly.

 

Just playing devils advocate what do you think the percentage of co-eds who had their breasts touched just this past weekend, said no and just went home? Story seems clear that player stopped and did not try to lay the wood on her when she resisted.

 

Again.

ncronline.org/news/accountability/reported-sexual-assault-notre-dame-campus-leaves-more-questions-answers


"What she eventually did tell both her therapist and her friend that night -- then committed to paper, in a handwritten statement she and the other young woman carefully signed, dated and handed over to campus police the next day, is that a Notre Dame football player sexually assaulted her in his room after two other students left them alone there. Yet Notre Dame police, who have jurisdiction to investigate even the most serious crimes on campus, still had not interviewed him when she committed suicide 10 days later -- and wouldn't for another five days. "He started sucking my neck and I started crying harder," Lizzy wrote. "He pulled down my tank top by the straps. He slipped them down my shoulders and proceeded to suck and lick my right breast while holding me down on his lap by the arms. I felt his hands start to move down towards my shorts as if he was trying to unbutton them or pull them off. I was still crying at this point and felt so scared that I couldn't move." When the local prosecutor declined to bring charges, as expected in a case without a living victim, his press release made the allegations sound so tame: "specifically, the touching of her breasts."

 

But no evidence of force. He did not expose himself and stopped when she told him to. Paula Jones had more on Bill Clinton and most dismissed that as no big deal.

 

". . . while holding me down on his lap by the arms."

 

Q. Now how long was it that you said you were in the room before you saw the exposed penis of the president – of the governor?

A. Five or six minutes. Five to seven minutes.

Q. What did you do as soon as you saw that?

A. I jumped up and I said, "I'm not that kind of girl," after I looked at it and he was trying to grab me. But, I mean, I went on ahead and jumped up and I turned around and that's when I – that's the thing I drew there from this perspective of standing up, looking down on the couch at him.

Q. So you didn't see it before you stood up?

A. Yes. I looked at it. It was pointing my direction. But when I stood up, it was pointed to the left.

Q. So then –

A. So.

Q. You stayed in the room for another five or 10 minutes?

A. Oh, no. I started to leave. And he pulled up and I was fixing to go out and I said, "I've got to be going. I've got to go back to the registration desk. I'm going to get in trouble." He pulled up, you know, stood up. And he was just red as he could be. You could tell I had embarrassed him so bad, because he probably expected me to do something. And he pulled up his pants, trying to situate himself. And I don't think he tucked in his pants. He just pulled them up and zipped his pants up, still with an erect penis.

And he said, "Well, you know, if you have any trouble, I want you to have Dave Herrington call me immediately." And that was the second time he had mentioned Dave Herrington. And then I proceeded to go on to the door and he rushed up behind me. I started to open up the door, he put his hand on the door to where I could not open it up any further, and he stopped me and he says, "You're a smart girl, let's keep this between ourselves." And when I went out the door, the state trooper was there, which is Trooper Ferguson. And he was standing out there.

Q. Are you saying that the governor did not let you go out the door?

A. Not for a split second, yeah. He confined me for a moment to let me know that I'm a smart girl and let's just keep this between ourselves.

Q. And the governor had his hand on –

A. On the door. When I opened the door, he stopped it, the back of the door, long enough to let me know what he wanted to tell me.

 

Sorry, Boom, but it beggars my puny powers of imagination to conjure what possible relevance Paula Jones has to Lizzy Seeberg.

 

That's true, too. And AS A WHOLE, it's fair to say their standards and academic experience is higher than average, and their players behave better than average.

But "higher" doesn't mean perfect. Sometimes we're too quick to pounce on any indescretion and hang onto it as a gotcha ("You guys are so supposed to be perfect!!! Not so!!!! HAHAHAHA!!!).

Thus, while it may be fair to judge them more harshly, if the ND blotter still dwarfs that at other schools by a large margin, I'd say there is very little hypocrisy. They occasionally screw up. And unless you are willing to mention every Alabama legal case on TV tonight, there's really no need to bring up ND's, either. Only if it affects the game ("So and so will miss the game because he was charged with . . . ")

Or to put it another way: Were Seeberg and Sullivan mentioned during the ND-USC game? If not, then why tonight?

 

I don't think that ESPN is obligated to turn tonight into an expose of the Notre Dame football program.

That being said, I don't think the problem is that a Notre Dame player allegedly misbehaved. Or more than that, really, when you include the two this offseason that fled from the police, along with Michael Floyd's sports journalist-level affinity for the bottle. It's the suspicion of a cover-up that galls people. That's tougher to defend, institutionally, than the one-off actions of a rogue teen-ager.