“In the era of Twitter, Facebook and Deadspin.com, being the big man on campus no longer means being the life of the party,” observe the New York Times’ Pete Thamel and Thayer Evans, citing the case of a girl taking off her shirt before having her photo snapped with Tim Tebow at a Gainsville, FL Radio Shack (by her mom, no less). “‘It™s happened four or five times,’ Tebow said with a sigh,” as if there wasn’t enough sacrifice in his daily do-gooder existence. Elsewhere in the piece, the dad of injured Oklahoma QB Sam Bradford complains of autograph seekers leaving swag at his doorstep, while Texas’ Heisman candidate Colt McCoy has already felt the sting of celebrity stalkers, without one penny of compensation.
(Longhorns QB Colt McCoy, being helped to his feet after being told there’s a YouTube video in circulation that portrays him as a drug pusher)
Last season a man showed up at McCoy™s apartment at 3 a.m. and woke him by beating on the door and screaming.
œHe was calling me by my first name, McCoy said. œHe was yelling at me and telling me to come outside and meet him out there in the yard.
The police were called and they took the man away, McCoy said. Shortly thereafter, McCoy and his roommates moved to a place where his pickup truck would be less visible.
McCoy said the man had been following him home after practices. Since the incident, he said, he has been more cautious about coming and going at the same time every day.
œIt was really scary at the time, McCoy said. œI really had no idea what to do, how to handle it. I was pretty kind of rattled there for a couple of weeks.
While I’d never seek to make light of a genuine threat towards McCoy, the senior signal-caller deserves considerable credit for keeping Leslie Cochrane‘s name out of the Paper Of Record. Some guys wouldn’t take the high road.