Remember Timmy Chang? You do if you're a college-football junkie — he was the quarterback for June Jones's University of Hawaii team, and ended his career as the NCAA's all-time leading passer.
Chang was a Pennington-armed rhythm QB who made his living throwing loopy 14-yard seam routes over and over and over again. (He also holds the NCAA interception record, making him sort of the Brett Favre of college football, only less annoying.) There were a lot of people who looked at his gaudy college numbers and thought he might be an NFL sleeper, and he got chances with the Cardinals, Eagles, and Lions before bouncing out to the CFL, where he quickly hit the skids after tours with the Hamilton Tiger Cats and Winnipeg Blue Bombers (and what the hell is a Blue Bomber, anyway?) and left sports, seemingly for good.
Back in Hawaii now, Chang was busted recently in the wake of a brawl that broke out last month in the Pearlridge area of Honolulu. A woman apparently tried to film the outdoor fracas, and a man came up to her, snatched her camera, and tossed it onto the roof of a nearby building. The man turned out to be Chang. He was booked on suspicion of robbery and released without charges pending further investigation.
Like most of his pro-career tosses, it was an incomplete pass. Weird ending for one of the great statistical footnotes in sports — give him 32 points.
Pecked
Pop quiz: what's the only major college-football team whose mascot is feminine?
Kudos to you if you picked out the alma mater of Joe Flacco and Rich Gannon, the University of Delaware Blue Hens. With apologies to the Toledo Mud Hens, Delaware's fightin' Hens are the leading female-named men's team on the American sporting scene, and lately they've been getting their due as a factor in college football, what with the ascendancy of alums like Flacco and tight end Ben Patrick.
With their new rise to sports legitimacy, they are now getting the trimmings, including some action on "Blotter." In an odd case, the Hens' leading receiver, Mark Duncan, was arrested last week for providing false statements to police in Newark, New Jersey.
It seems Duncan was admitted to a hospital with stab wounds on May 30. He initially told cops the incident happened during a basketball game. Later on, he said he was walking down Cleveland Avenue when he got stuck by someone he knew. Then he changed his story again, saying he was jumped by four unknown assailants. Not that there aren't all sorts of ways to get stabbed in Newark, but this is ridiculous.
Cops think there's something not right about Duncan's vacillating and have decided to hit him with charges of falsely reporting an incident and hindering prosecution. Give him eight points for the strange tall tale.
Ty Law award redux
We get one of these every six months or so — jock gets busted and immediately starts selling cops on his star-athlete status. You might remember Ty Law telling Miami police, "Don't touch me, I'm a professional athlete!" Now we have former Buffalo Bills great Bruce Smith, who pulled the same stunt in May after a DUI in Virginia Beach. In a minor variation on the technique, Smith tried to blame his failure of drunk tests on bad knees, repeatedly reminding the officer of his time in the NFL. The cop didn't buy it, however, saying, "I know who you are, I know what you did in your career." And then went ahead and busted him anyway.
Smith was convicted this past week, but promptly filed an appeal. Give him the standard 25 DUI points, plus three for the Ty Law aggravator.
Matt Taibbi can be reached at m_taibbi@yahoo.com.
