If you clicked on the link to the article at the top of the thread on 8-25-2016 or later, you saw the updated online version. The tone of the updated version was much less "in your face" with the Freshman year drug arrest as the original version was. Apparently, it didn't match the "print" version so the Post updated it and good for them.

Excellent perspective.

I really believe that with the right coaches player development means more than bigger, stronger, faster and things greater than MAC Championships occur.

Of course, your mileage may vary, opinion-wise, but c'mon - Arkley kind of stepped in it in that article.

It's too bad, because the details about Windham's tough life in Tampa (previously unreported) and the interview with him were great ingredients.

But Arkley badly blew the part about Windham's drug case in Athens.

Arkley: "His charge was dropped. It was as if it never happened."

Baloney. Windham pled guilty and was convicted of felony complicity to aggravated trafficking in drugs. Ohio Code says that means he acted "with the kind of culpability required for commission of an offense" in that he did "aid or abet another."

Translation: He may have been "running an errand" for his roommate (said to be Fisher), but he knew what kind of errand it was.

Arkley: "Windham entered a plea of abeyance ..."

Again, baloney. No such plea exists. He plead guilty. The plea was held in abeyance for purposes of the diversion program.

Arkley: "Whether the charge ... or the ... arrest itself were (sic) warranted ... even the county prosecutor had doubts ... He did it once."

Oscar Mayer. Strike three. Questioning the propriety of a case when the defendant has plead guilty and no exculpatory evidence has been introduced in court or raised later? That's not Arkley's job. More likely, the prosecutor would have dropped the charge if he had real doubts. And how the heck does Arkley know Windham did it once? He didn't write that Windham *said* he did it once, Arkley wrote in his own voice that Windham did it once.

How many NCAA programs have a convicted felon as their starting quarterback? How many felons are even on rosters? What, if anything, does OU policy say about the enrollment status of students convicted of felonies? Those would have been interesting questions to for Arkley to explore.

Great perspective looking at it a different way.

Love the username too.

The "He did it once" statement appeared in the article (in the print version for the Sunday paper, at least) not as a quote and not as a paraphrase of any source. It was Arkley's statement, not the prosecutor's. Maybe the prosecutor told Arkley he did it only once, but that cannot be drawn from the article as written. It might lean that way, as L.C. points out, because Fisher was apparently under investigation long enough to be charged with four counts of trafficking, whereas Windham got one count of complicity. Still, who really knows?

I don't know the answers to your questions about the diversion program and whether or not the conviction stays on Windham's record, though I suppose I could research it. What'd be better would be if the Hatch guy from The Post and/or Arkley could have fleshed that out for us, along with how the university and football program dealt with it, and whether or not that was at all typical.