It's not exactly news that the CU-Boulder football program is a mess. But the hiring of former San Jose State head coach Mike MacIntyre was supposed to be the first step on the road to recovery.
Now, unfortunately, there's more recovery necessary, thanks to starting quarterback Jordan Webb's arrest over the weekend.
The story's complicated, but the continuing damage to a program in crisis is plain as day.
Webb, as you'll recall, was named starting quarterback prior to the beginning of last season. Here's an interview with him on the subject.
Unfortunately, the CU Buffs were catastrophically bad in 2012, losing most games by big margins, and only managing to eke out a single victory, against Washington State. Here's the highlight of the latter game -- Webb's fourth-and-nine touchdown run, which gave Colorado a 35-34 win.
In late November, with the Buffs at their lowest point in years, head coach Jon Embree was fired after just two years -- such a quick trigger that former CU-Buffs coach Bill McCartney (who was recently named to the College Football Hall of Fame) called the sacking racist.
Shortly thereafter, MacIntyre was hired, and even though Webb was due to graduate, he had another year of eligibility and decided to stick around. Then, last month, he tore up his knee, knocking him out for the entire 2013 campaign. Yet he reportedly was hoping to be back and ready to play by late September.
This emotion has likely taken on a different cast now, given his recent brush with the law. What happened?
Continue for more about CU-Boulder quarterback Jordan Webb's arrest, complete with photos and another video. An interview with Webb from last season:
According to the Boulder Daily Camera, quoting from a police report, the incident in question took place at around 3 a.m. Saturday morning. That's when Lee Bussey, a 22-year-old Air Force Academy student, was walking with a female companion in the vicinity of College Avenue and 13th Street.
At that point, the pair encountered Webb and Alex Lewis, a onetime CU lineman who after last season decided to get the hell out of Boulder and transfer to the University of Nebraska. They're said to have just attended a pal's graduation party when Bussey and Lewis bumped into each other, leading to angry words, a shoving match and more.
Bussey's friend is said to have told police Lewis pushed the AFA student into a brick wall head-first on several occasions. Then, she went on, Lewis and Webb forced him to the ground, with both of them slugging him.
The woman ran to an apartment to get help, and upon her return, she recalls seeing Lewis grabbing Bussey around the neck and then hurling him into a parking kiosk, knocking him unconscious in the process. (That would explain why Bussey's memory of what took place is so fuzzy.) She added that a black SUV arrived at one point, apparently to rescue Lewis and Webb -- but when the police pulled up around the same time, the vehicle split.
Shockingly enough, the story offered by Lewis is very different. Lewis maintained that Bussey tried to slug him, but his swing missed, after which the lineman shoved him down -- and he did so again when the AFA student took another shot. He insisted that Webb hadn't taken part in any of these actions.
In this last scenario, Webb is portrayed as little more than a bystander who watched as his buddy and another guy got into it -- and if that proves to be the case, he could avoid criminal charges. But no matter what happens, the tale is the latest embarrassment for a program that's become a bad joke -- and it's getting less funny all the time.
Here are booking photos of Lewis and Webb.
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