UT's Taylor can't outrun his troubles

AUSTIN - The man with the crazy athletic ability apparently has even crazier judgment.

He can run away and leap over USC defenders, but he can't stay out of a pecan farm in a merged community called Little River Academy.

Details from early Sunday morning are pretty sketchy, so it's hard to vilify Texas running back Ramonce Taylor for that single incident.

Unfortunately for Taylor, there was plenty of background to go on before Sunday.

Check the team picture taken at the White House when the national champs went to visit George W. Bush. You won't see Ramonce.

Ask anyone who was at the ring ceremony shortly after the Rose Bowl. They didn't see Ramonce.

There's a reason for those absences - Mack Brown.

Back in mid-January, the Texas coach asked Taylor to stay away from the team for a while so he could get his grades up and take care of some off-the-field issues. At the time, not much was made of the news, because the Texas PR machine said Taylor would be "excused" from spring practice. At the time, it seemed like they were doing Taylor a favor. Letting him concentrate on his schoolwork, so he could remain eligible.

Now, it seems more likely that the excused absence was a warning from Mack: Stay away from my football team until you get your life straight.

The news from Sunday morning sounds as if being "excused" from the team wasn't a strong enough warning.

Here's what we know from the police report: Sheriff deputies got a report at 1:34 a.m. Sunday about a large fight at a Little River Academy pecan farm. Minutes later, Taylor called the police from a nearby convenience store to complain about a window on his vehicle being broken during the melee.

Officers at the fight scene warned the deputies that Taylor had threatened to return to the party with a gun.Taylor allowed the deputies to search his vehicle, where they found a live .40-caliber bullet and a backpack stitched with "Big 12 Conference" containing about 5.3 pounds of marijuana. From there, Taylor was charged with possession of marijuana and released from Bell County jail on $5,000 bail.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, the farm's owner, who says the party was a graduation celebration for his daughter, says Taylor crashed the party and tried to sell drugs to the revelers.

According to Taylor's attorney, Taylor was racially harassed at the party, and a brick or rock was thrown through his vehicle's window. More importantly, the lawyer says the marijuana doesn't belong to his client.

All those details will have to be sorted out in a court of law, not in this newspaper.

But, if nothing else, Taylor is definitely guilty of poor judgment.

Long before Taylor visited the ill-fated pecan farm, his coach was scheduled to speak to sports editors from across the state at an annual convention. Brown lived up to that obligation Monday morning and was as pleasant as ever.

He couldn't discuss much about Taylor because of legal issues, but his facial expressions and the tone of his voice told everyone what he likely was thinking: He'd like to go up to Taylor's house and give him a kick in the butt.

He wouldn't do it for what Taylor's bad decisions are doing to his football team, but for how Taylor is wasting his athletic ability.

Even if Taylor thought all that green stuff in his backpack was parsley and he merely was visiting Little River Academy looking for ingredients for a fantastic pecan pie he was planning to make his mom for Mother's Day, it doesn't seem likely Taylor will ever play at the University of Texas again.

Too many bad decisions. Too much wasted talent. Too bad.

Contact sports editor Matt Young at 886-3702 or HYPERLINK mailto:youngm@caller.com youngm@caller.com

This Week's Events