On a Halloween weekend that featured looting, riots and a healthy dose of general insanity, not even the UW football team could escape the demons that took over Madison.
Two Badgers went down, one before Saturday’s craziness and one after, as the struggling squad took two more major hits, and that’s not even including the 20-3 beat down they suffered in Iowa.
Lee Evans, already out for the season with a knee injury: arrested.
Anthony Davis, already battling an ankle injury and too-lofty expectations: stabbed.
The entire UW football squad: stunned.
“It was just a bad weekend overall,” said center Al Johnson.
That one’s already up for understatement of the year.
At 1-4 in the Big Ten, with their hopes for a quality bowl evaporating one loss at a time, the last thing these Badgers needed was another distraction.
Evans’ return plan was squelched two weeks ago, finally allowing the squad to stop ruminating on the star’s return and focus on the rest of the season, sans Evans.
One not-so-routine traffic stop later, Evans is suddenly back in the team’s collective consciousness and for all the wrong reasons. Following his arrest in Ridgeway on tentative marijuana-possession charges, questions began to arise.
Why wasn’t he on the team bus? Because he wasn’t on the traveling squad, according to Barry Alvarez.
Although injured, had Evans rode to away games with the team earlier in the season? Yes, according to Alvarez.
So what changed? Why was Evans, a senior, a team captain, getting pulled over for speeding in Iowa County when he should have been traveling with his mates to Iowa City?
Alvarez defended his injured flanker: “Lee has been a model citizen for us in our program for four years, and we have not had a bit of a problem with him.”
And indeed they haven’t. Throughout his time at Wisconsin, Evans has been the antithesis of a superstar, the anti-Randy Moss. During last year’s record-setting season, he never gloated, never held press conferences to remind the world how great he was.
He forewent NFL millions to return for his senior year, because he felt he could help the program. In these days of bug bucks and bigger egos, you just don’t see that much anymore.
This year, Evans could have thrown in the proverbial towel after injuring his knee, could have sulked and whined and thought about the small fortune he just might have thrown away.
But he didn’t. Evans just rededicated himself to his new role: coach and motivator. He tutored the Badgers’ cadre of talented but woefully inexperienced wideouts, and his work has shown. Jon Orr is on the cusp of stardom; Brandon Williams isn’t far behind.
None of this changes the fact that Evans was arrested on drug charges, of course. In the grand scheme of athlete screw-ups, Evans’ blemish probably ranks a little above missing a practice and well below Jeff Smoker’s or Kerry Collins’ admission of a substance-abuse problem. The numbers show that damn near everybody and their brother smokes, or has smoked, pot. Not everyone, however, is spending their time trying to convince NFL teams to make a serious monetary investment in them.
And therein lies the root of Evans’ problems. A year ago he was a first-round pick. One major knee surgery and one drug arrest later, he’s as big a question mark as there is in the draft.
Lee Evans is not a criminal or a troublemaker of some sort; he’s a stand-up guy, one of those rare, genuinely good kids who hit an unfortunate string of bad luck. Following his knee injury, Evans never seemed to ask, “Why me?” After his untimely encounter with the Iowa County police, Evans probably can’t help but ask himself just that.
In these days, when many a star uses his abilities to cover up character flaws, Evans will have to count on teams still believing in his flawless character, along with his now-enigmatic abilities, if he hopes to go high in the draft.
Evans’ attempted climb back from knee surgery was valiant, but ultimately a failure. Here’s to hoping he has better luck climbing out of the shadow of his arrest.
