Notre Dame's tragicaly loses top recruit

[BSchultz17]

This is ashame. This kid had the world ahead of him. I think it goes without saying that there were probably things going on that should not have been with some high school seniors unsupervised on spring break in Florida, I just hope the media doesn't dwell on it.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=5051968

[davemanddd]

This is ashame. This kid had the world ahead of him. I think it goes without saying that there were probably things going on that should not have been with some high school seniors unsupervised on spring break in Florida, I just hope the media doesn't dwell on it.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=5051968

too late. espn already ran a report on sportscenter this morning where mike kelly expressed his condolences to the kid's family. very sad.

maybe this will be a wake-up call to all the other parents whose kids go down to florida or some other tropical paradise area for all of the spring break frivolity, not just athletes, but all kids??? then again, maybe not. i forgot it's the "me" generation.

you know, i never have understood what all the big deal with it was though. you can drink, get high, have casual sex and run rampant with hedonism right here in ohio. why spend all that money to go down there to stay in an over-priced, flea-bitten, roach-infested hotel with a ton of your friends all jam packed into the same room like a bunch of sardines just to throw-up, get robbed, get an std from a complete stranger or get killed???

look, i feel bad for the kid and his family, but how stupid do you have to be not to learn from other people's mistakes and not avoid doing the same things over and over again??? do the names natalie holloway or len bias ring a bell with anybody??? if you're gonna play with fire, sometimes you end up getting burnt and yet we're still surprised/shocked when it happens???

[jordan kramer]

This is ashame. This kid had the world ahead of him. I think it goes without saying that there were probably things going on that should not have been with some high school seniors unsupervised on spring break in Florida, I just hope the media doesn't dwell on it.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=5051968

too late. espn already ran a report on sportscenter this morning where mike kelly expressed his condolences to the kid's family. very sad.

maybe this will be a wake-up call to all the other parents whose kids go down to florida or some other tropical paradise area for all of the spring break frivolity, not just athletes, but all kids??? then again, maybe not. i forgot it's the "me" generation.

you know, i never have understood what all the big deal with it was though. you can drink, get high, have casual sex and run rampant with hedonism right here in ohio. why spend all that money to go down there to stay in an over-priced, flea-bitten, roach-infested hotel with a ton of your friends all jam packed into the same room like a bunch of sardines just to throw-up, get robbed, get an std from a complete stranger or get killed???

look, i feel bad for the kid and his family, but how stupid do you have to be not to learn from other people's mistakes and not avoid doing the same things over and over again??? do the names natalie holloway or len bias ring a bell with anybody??? if you're gonna play with fire, sometimes you end up getting burnt and yet we're still surprised/shocked when it happens???

yes, because EVERYONE who goes somewhere sunny with a beach for spring break with their buddies is gonna end up dead or with an STD. Christ, get some perspective. this kid was havin some fun with his best friends, livin it up during the best years of his life. i guess everyone is supposed to stay coped up in ohio all their lives huh? this is a sad story, but i can tell people already wanna turn it into an indictment of our society. he just as easily coulda got drunk and fell off his roof in ohio with his parents home. this is just a terrible random accident and a tragedy, don't try to make it anything more

[motherscratcher]

Shut up, Dave. You sound like an asshole.


This story makes me feel sick to my stomach. As a fairly new parent myself I cannot begin to imagine what that family is going through right now. Sucks.

[davemanddd]

Shut up, Dave. You sound like an asshole.


This story makes me feel sick to my stomach. As a fairly new parent myself I cannot begin to imagine what that family is going through right now. Sucks.

geez, i thought cutting off the head of the messenger ended with the fall of rome???

i understand it's not a pretty subject to discuss. i've had more than my share of family tragedy as well (my mom died when i was only 8, i had a sister die at 36, a niece die at 18 and a sister in-law at 24) and you're right, it does suck and it just makes me sick to my stomach as well. i said it was sad and that i felt bad for the kid and his family, but if you want to go bury your head in the sand and not talk about the real problem, that's your prerogative.

i for one do certainly consider it the perfect opportunity to use it as an indictment against society as a whole. after all, if not now, when??? it's called objectivity, something that seems to be in rather short supply these days. my hope is that other parents will use this very unfortunate situation as a means to use caution and better judgement when it comes to letting their kids go anywhere "risky", especially spring break down in florida, knowing what all goes on down there then and in other similar places like cancun and the caribbean.

by the way, in terms of perspective, i'm only pointing the finger at myself. 3 years ago i let my then 18-year old daughter go to florida for her spring break with all of her friends and she came back with a pierced eyebrow and a highly visible gawd-awful tattoo on the side of her neck. she also got busted for under-age consumption and a curfew violation. oh and 9 months later i became a grandpa at 42 and now i'm raising my own granddaughter because my daughter doesn't want to be a mom, so don't even talk to me about "perspective".

the question now is, what happens next??? i wouldn't be surprised if the parents actually become advocates for better safety measures at these hotels or some other cause related to their son's death. his death is certainly a shame and it will be an even bigger shame if something good doesn't come out of it.

[peeker643]

You do the very best you can imparting wisdom, common sense and discipline into your kids and then you pray to Christ (or whomever) that it's enough.

Kids do stupid shit in cars too but most will end up driving. People have been killed by butter knives and air plane crashes but it's difficult buttering bread with a fork or walking to Las Vegas.

Bad things happen every single day because it only takes one lapse for someone to assume room temperature.

Your heart clearly goes out to the parents. But an indictment of spring break, Florida or vacations is ridiculous.

[danwismar]

If it's perspective you want...consider the girl who died a week ago in the same town, in the same manner...falling off a motel balcony...but who we didn't even hear about at the time because she wasn't a football recruit at a bigtime school.

She's no less dead..her parents and family and friends no less grieving...her loss no less tragic or significant. But had it not been for James' death, we never would have even heard about her, so common is this type of accident.

My heart aches for both sets of parents.

And I would suggest that is not some symptom of our supposedly degraded culture and society. 40 years ago, 17-year old kids (like me...OK, not like me...actually me) were doing stupid drunken things in Florida and getting injured or killed. (not suggesting James was drunk, because I don't know that).

In fact, 39 years ago this spring, I jumped into a Pontiac Firebird with two other guys and two cases of beer on the back seat, and we drank the greater part of it... driver included, in the 24 hours it took to get to Ft. Lauderdale...and that was one of the smarter things we did that week. My own "injuries" were limited to a sunburn so bad I couldn't move for a day or leave the room for two.

This is not a problem unique to "kids these days".

Ditto to Peeker's sentiments.

[waborat]

Most likely the kid was horsin' around...

We've all done it and most of us have survived crazy stunts...Hell, we still do jackass ideas at work all the time...

Like Peek says, all it takes is that one instance of foolishness to have it all come crashing down...

But blaming it on a vacation doesn't make a difference...

Guess it's the Big Guys' way of weeding out the herd

[Cerebral_DownTime]

I blame the balcony for being so high.

[waborat]

I blame the balcony for being so high.

...and the railings so low

(somewhere there's a lawyer looking into this)

[waborat]

Just saw this pop up on the newswire...

Drunk, beligerent and leaning over the rail...

Typical Fighting Irish

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr ... fatal_fall

[skatingtripods]

Terrible story, but what the hell kind of parents let their 17 year old son go to Panama City for Spring Break? I can understand it for college students. First, they're legal adults. Second, everybody needs to unwind in college. But, letting your 17 year old kid go and inevitably get smashed and potentially do something to screw up his life?

Not saying I blame his parents for their kid getting bombed and falling to his death. Just making a point.

[danwismar]

Based on what I've read, this was a group of more than 40 St. X kids and several parents...so it was not an event where parents let their kids go to Florida without adult supervision.

[leadpipe]

That chick in Aruba was at a chaperoned spring break event as well.....

Really, Peeker hit the nail on the head. Young people do stupid shit. Yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever. I thank the big guy quite often that I didn't get pinched with some sort of DUI, injured in some stupid stunt or altercation, or got a pants full of crabs.

The fact it was spring break matters little here. You think that cat, a big time recruit hasn't been partying his ass off practically every non football weekend of the last couple years.

We all would be doing the same thing. All potentially on a balcony......

Ambulance chasers on high alert.

[jb]

This is ashame. This kid had the world ahead of him. I think it goes without saying that there were probably things going on that should not have been with some high school seniors unsupervised on spring break in Florida, I just hope the media doesn't dwell on it.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=5051968

too late. espn already ran a report on sportscenter this morning where mike kelly expressed his condolences to the kid's family. very sad.

maybe this will be a wake-up call to all the other parents whose kids go down to florida or some other tropical paradise area for all of the spring break frivolity, not just athletes, but all kids??? then again, maybe not. i forgot it's the "me" generation.

you know, i never have understood what all the big deal with it was though. you can drink, get high, have casual sex and run rampant with hedonism right here in ohio. why spend all that money to go down there to stay in an over-priced, flea-bitten, roach-infested hotel with a ton of your friends all jam packed into the same room like a bunch of sardines just to throw-up, get robbed, get an std from a complete stranger or get killed???

look, i feel bad for the kid and his family, but how stupid do you have to be not to learn from other people's mistakes and not avoid doing the same things over and over again??? do the names natalie holloway or len bias ring a bell with anybody??? if you're gonna play with fire, sometimes you end up getting burnt and yet we're still surprised/shocked when it happens???

yes, because EVERYONE who goes somewhere sunny with a beach for spring break with their buddies is gonna end up dead or with an STD. Christ, get some perspective. this kid was havin some fun with his best friends, livin it up during the best years of his life. i guess everyone is supposed to stay coped up in ohio all their lives huh? this is a sad story, but i can tell people already wanna turn it into an indictment of our society. he just as easily coulda got drunk and fell off his roof in ohio with his parents home. this is just a terrible random accident and a tragedy, don't try to make it anything more

Rack the young man.

God, I should have DEFINATELY died from my SB behaviour in the mid 80's.

War: Penrods

[JoJo White]

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/b ... aaf,239154

A toxicology report released Wednesday found Notre Dame signee Matt James' blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit when he fell to his death from a hotel balcony during a spring break trip to Florida last month. James, a 17-year-old, all-everything offensive tackle out of Cincinnati, had a BAC of 0.19, more than double Florida's threshold for "legally drunk," 0.08, a huge quantity of alcohol for a guy who goes 6'8"/280 pounds. Panama City police said witnesses described James as "drunk and belligerent" when he leaned over a railing to taunt people in another room and went over the edge. [Cincinnati Enquirer]

[jb]

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Headlinin-Irish-recruit-was-far-beyond-legal-l?urn=ncaaf,239154

A toxicology report released Wednesday found Notre Dame signee Matt James' blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit when he fell to his death from a hotel balcony during a spring break trip to Florida last month. James, a 17-year-old, all-everything offensive tackle out of Cincinnati, had a BAC of 0.19, more than double Florida's threshold for "legally drunk," 0.08, a huge quantity of alcohol for a guy who goes 6'8"/280 pounds. Panama City police said witnesses described James as "drunk and belligerent" when he leaned over a railing to taunt people in another room and went over the edge. [Cincinnati Enquirer]

The Xavier community must be so proud...

[furls]

Very sad story indeed.

From the time they are born all children are trying to come up with new and creative ways to kill themselves. Whether it is plugging tweezers into electric sockets or prying open medicine bottles, it is our job as parents to try to prevent them. Unfortunately, this story is a little tired and this type of thing happens about 5 times per year. All I can say is that there is no f'ing way my kids are going to spring break, it just doesn't pass the common sense test (with or without chaperones).

I don't want to sound insensitive. I am sure that if the parents and all involved could turn back time, they would, but as long as parents keep letting their 17-18 year old kids run down to Panama City and the like in droves this will be a tragic story that you will see played out every year. This year it just got a bit more press than usual.

[jb]

Very sad story indeed.

From the time they are born all children are trying to come up with new and creative ways to kill themselves. Whether it is plugging tweezers into electric sockets or prying open medicine bottles, it is our job as parents to try to prevent them. Unfortunately, this story is a little tired and this type of thing happens about 5 times per year. All I can say is that there is no f'ing way my kids are going to spring break, it just doesn't pass the common sense test (with or without chaperones).

I don't want to sound insensitive. I am sure that if the parents and all involved could turn back time, they would, but as long as parents keep letting their 17-18 year old kids run down to Panama City and the like in droves this will be a tragic story that you will see played out every year. This year it just got a bit more press than usual.

With you Furls. Gotta pay your dues a year living at college so you can handle this stuff with some frame of reference. Unfortunately, proms are now like freaking weddings complete with honeymoons and HSers think sping break on their own is an entitlement.


Plus, I watched Taken again on HBO and you can see how dumb these enabling parents are. All it odes is get your kid into a sex trafficking ring.