Stoops on thin ice with Jarboe

By Berry Tramel

Published: August 1, 2008

NORMAN — By now, you've probably seen Josh Jarboe's YouTube video, and if you haven't, consider yourself lucky.

Jarboe's jabbering about shooting people — two months after he pleaded guilty to carrying a gun onto a Georgia high school campus — shows that he is undeserving of an Oklahoma scholarship.

But that doesn't mean he won't get a third chance. Bob Stoops is not the most sentimental of souls, no Father Flanagan, but he has a solid track record turning troubled players into solid citizens, or getting rid of them before they embarrass the school and the state too much.

Stoops indicated Thursday he won't remove Jarboe from the squad.

"Kick a guy off the team for what he says?” Stoops said. The whole Internet culture frustrates Stoops. "We're starting to talk about everything kids say and do,” Stoops said. "Now we're in people's homes, in their private spaces.”

Maybe so. But the same youth culture that makes this kind of video acceptable also knows that YouTube is the destination of any interesting video. Jarboe himself took this from private to public.

Jarboe's status certainly is a reasonable debate.

It was no clear choice for Jarboe to even be welcome in Norman in the first place, after he was charged with a felony in March and pleaded guilty in May. A judge reduced the conviction to a misdemeanor under Georgia's First Offender's Act, otherwise Jarboe would not even have been eligible for a scholarship, under OU policy.

Oklahoma media did not chastise Stoops for taking the gamble; he had earned the right to be trusted on such dicey decisions.

Now, Jarboe has burned Stoops. The video calls into question whether Jarboe has any clue of the gravity of what he did last spring.

Among the lyrics of his rap:

"...Shoot ya in you head, you might be dead, with a halo.

"I put his a** in a coma.

"I'll shoot ya a** up like a damn pool table.”

Yes, all kinds of kids, of all kinds of upbringings, rap such ridiculous lyrics. But when it happens before the ink is dry on a gun-at-school conviction, you're talking strike one and strike two.

The old good-kid-who-made-a-mistake argument doesn't wash. Put the gun conviction with the video, and Jarboe loses all claim to being just a knucklehead and not an outlaw.

When OU announced in late May that Jarboe's scholarship would be honored, Stoops said, "He understands that anything less than exemplary behavior will not be tolerated.”

It's quite apparent that Jarboe understands no such thing.

Jarboe has placed Stoops in quite the pickle.

Stoops stuck his neck out for Jarboe, and before the first practice, this is how Stoops is repaid. Stoops is stepping farther and farther out on a thin branch if he keeps Jarboe.

But Stoops is no stranger to thin branches, though maybe not this thin.

Stoops recalled what I wrote seven years ago, that dynasties crumble from within and he better be careful. This was after Stoops brought in Lynn McGruder, a transfer from Tennessee who was facing a felony drug charge.

McGruder became an exemplary student and even a hero for his help with a family in a burning van after an I-35 crash. The Big 12 named McGruder and teammate Mark Clayton its sportsmen of the year.

That's a great story. McGruder was at a crossroads, where his life could spiral into a mess, and instead OU football helped him turn triumphant in the most meaningful of ways.

Stoops knows what he's doing. But I'm glad it's his reputation, and not mine, that rests in the hands of Josh Jarboe.

Comments