This story made me want to hurl for several reasons. For one, the writer tries to paint a picture of Mississippi Negroes as being the embodiment of racial tolerance (which is the opposite of reality). The worst part to me was that this kid and his family are portrayed as good because they are so accepting of diversities, including interracial relationships. Never mind that he is White and is doing really well at being a QB at Jackson State. After reading this pro-black mess, I don't care if he never plays another down.
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?columnist=forde_pat&id=6021619
JACKSON, Miss.
A fence separated the old black woman from the football field, but it
didn't stop her. She wanted to meet the young white quarterback. She
asked the coach to bring him over. If you don't have a place to go for
Thanksgiving, the old woman told the quarterback through the fence, we
will feed you.
<div><div style="margin-left: 10px; width: 200px;">
<div style="width: 200px;"><cite>Jackson State </cite>Casey Therriault has been embraced by the Jackson State community.</div></div></div>
In
the stands in Memphis, Tenn., weeks earlier, a black stranger struck up
a conversation with the white quarterback's father. He was easy to pick
out, after all, a pale face in a section full of dark faces. By the end
of the game, the quarterback's father had been invited to stay at the
stranger's house for the next home game.
Everyone wanted to reach out to the white quarterback. He had come
hundreds of miles from his native Michigan to this strange place -- to
Jackson State University, a historically black college -- because he had
nowhere else to go, with a past he was trying to escape. He didn't know
what to expect. He sure didn't expect all this. All the support and
attention and generosity directed his way was startling.
Just a few months before, no college wanted anything to do with him.
Now, this novelty act of a quarterback was suddenly a minor celebrity.
In a state that was crippled by racial intolerance, the Jackson State
fans didn't care that he was different from them. They didn't care
about the trouble in his past and the chilling word that was attached to
him. Or maybe it was because of the differences, and because of the
trouble, that they reached out.
Maybe this was the latter stages of a dream come to fruition.
<hr style="width: 50%;">
The guy was intensely drunk, with a blood-alcohol content that later
would be measured at .27 -- more than three times the legal limit to
drive a car. He swung first. He hit Casey Therriault in the face.
The reaction was immediate, instinctual. Therriault retaliated, and
Therriault connected. Dropped the man to the cold Michigan sidewalk with
what police and media reports say was the one and only punch he threw.
<div><div style="margin-left: 10px; width: 300px;">
<div style="width: 300px;"><cite>Lance Wynn\Grand Rapids Press\Landov</cite>Therriault
apologized to Jonathon Krystiniak's mother in court, and has since
received her forgiveness for his role in her son's death.</div></div></div>
Therriault
was scared then. He was 18 years old and home from College of the
Sequoias, a California junior college, on Christmas break. He'd been in
this nightclub, the Margarita Grill in his hometown of Grand Rapids,
with some buddies and some friends of those friends whom he didn't
really know. He hadn't been drinking, he said, but trouble followed them
out the door when they left.
The drunk guy was grabbing at them, trying to start something.
Someone in the group directed an insult at the drunk, and Therriault
laughed.
That's when the drunk guy hit him. And he hit back. And then he was scared, and he got out of there.
What happened next would change the life of everyone out on the
sidewalk that night. Some of the other guys in the group jumped on the
drunk guy. Kicking. Stomping.
They beat him into a coma. Two weeks later, when the phone rang back
at junior college in California, the prosecutor's words were
incomprehensible: Therriault was wanted back home for questioning in the
death of Jonathon Krystiniak.
Charges eventually were filed against five men, Therriault included: manslaughter.
"It was kind of like I had lost everything," Therriault said. "It was somewhere you never expected to be."
When a plea deal was offered, Therriault attorney Richard Zambon told
him he should take it. The judge believed he was the least culpable of
all the defendants and would sentence him accordingly. The other
alternative was to risk a trial -- and although a self-defense argument
was compelling, a conviction could result in 15 years in state prison.
So Therriault took the deal and the six-month county jail sentence
that came with it. Three other defendants were given one- to three-year
sentences in state prison. A fifth gambled on a trial and lost, and was
given a sentence of 27 months to 15 years.
In January 2009, a year after the fatal altercation, Therriault entered the Kent County Correctional Facility in Grand Rapids.
"It's something that you have to accept, and if you can do it, you
can learn a lot about yourself -- not that you'd do it to have a
learning experience," he said. "But it's a place that's so dark and so
low, that's the only thing you can take from it."
After several weeks in the county jail, Therriault was moved into the
adjacent work-release facility. For the next five months, he made
pizzas and washed dishes at Frankie V's, a sports bar owned by his old
position coach at Wyoming Park High School in suburban Grand Rapids. His
girlfriend, Sarah Hernandez, would pick him up in the morning for work
and drive him back to the jail at night.
That's when Therriault would take stock of where he'd been and how he ended up there, behind bars.
"I got put up with somebody in a room, one person who turned out to
be someone who helped me a lot," he said. "He was someone who kind of
couldn't get away from [criminal] situations and made me realize that no
matter what's going on in your life, somebody has it much worse. I had
people who were there for me, and some people don't even have that.
"I grew up. I found out that I've got to appreciate things a lot
more. You kind of go from having a lot, having a future, to nothing."
<hr style="width: 50%;">
Julie Therriault was heartbroken and irate.
Her son had served his time. Why couldn't he get another chance?
<div><div style="margin-left: 10px; width: 300px;">
<div style="width: 300px;"><cite>Therriault Family </cite>Casey Therriault is very close with his brothers.</div></div></div>
Casey
had come out of jail and gotten on with life. He enrolled at Grand
Rapids Community College and became an immediate star of the football
team, passing for more than 2,000 yards and 24 touchdowns while leading
GRCC to a 9-2 record. He played well and stayed well clear of any
trouble.
Yet all the four-year schools that had shown initial interest in
Casey shied away. They loved his game but not the alarming word that
surfaced with his name: manslaughter.
"I wanted to scream, 'Hey, this is a great kid right here,'" Julie said.
She wanted to tell them about how Casey and older brother Chad (now
serving an Army tour of duty in Afghanistan) doted on their two
handicapped brothers. Kyle, 27, has spinal dysplasia that curbed his
height and has led to multiple major surgeries. And Lucas, 18, has both
spinal dysplasia and a severe mental handicap that his family said has
left him with the brain development of a 2-year-old.
Julie wanted the coaches who bailed on Casey to see him hold Lucas'
hand. To see him change Lucas' diaper. To see him toss Lucas a football
and make him smile.
She wanted to tell them about how Casey stood up in the courtroom and
apologized to Krystiniak's mother, and how she forgave Casey. She
wanted them to know about how Julie and Ed Therriault and Krystiniak's
mom were all in tears and leaning on each other at the end of those
traumatic court proceedings.
But most colleges didn't want to go beyond a troubling Google search
and a surface explanation of what happened. They knew the impossibility
of selling an administration on recruiting a guy who did time for
manslaughter.
"He was a good kid and then, bang," Julie said. "Getting hit with
that was hard. It was the most horrible thing I've endured as a mother,
and I've been through numerous life-threatening surgeries with two sons.
The thing I went through with Casey I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy."
So even after a productive season at GRCC, there was nowhere for
Casey to go in the spring of 2010. That's when the most unlikely of
schools made a phone call.
<hr style="width: 50%;">
Earnest Wilson had been an assistant coach at New Mexico State, and
he'd had his eye on Casey Therriault for a while. A disciple of Hal
Mumme and his Air Raid offense -- which emphasizes quick, precise throws
from the shotgun formation, in some ways a precursor of the current
spread offenses -- Wilson saw a quarterback who fit that offense
perfectly.
<div><div style="margin-left: 10px; width: 200px;">
<div style="width: 200px;"><cite>Paul L. Newby II\Grand Rapids Press\Landov </cite>Therriault passed for more than 2,000 yards and 24 touchdowns at Grand Rapids.</div></div></div>
But
Mumme had gotten fired from New Mexico State in 2008. His successor,
DeWayne Walker, had retained Wilson -- but after a shaky, 3-10 debut
season in '09, Walker was in no position to bring in a guy with a
radioactive résumé like Casey's. Like every other school, New Mexico
State backed off.
Then Wilson relocated to Jackson State as offensive coordinator and
installed the pass-happy offense at a quarterback-poor school.
"We were looking for a thrower," Wilson said.
He told head coach Rick Comegy about Casey and got the go-ahead to
recruit him. Comegy is a 35-year veteran of coaching at HBC programs,
and among his reclamation projects was former Oklahoma quarterback
Charles Thompson. After an infamous cocaine bust at OU, he wound up with
Comegy at Central State in Ohio.
"Guys are going to make mistakes when they're young," Comegy said.
"Not one of the guys on our football team hasn't had an incident in
their life that they regret. I think they understand it better than we
do as adults sometime."
One other thing the kids seem to understand better than adults: race. Casey's reaction to being recruited by a black school?
"Oh, that's a little different," he said. "It didn't really cross my
mind. "¦ I didn't think of going to a historically black college."
Fact is, Casey had played on racially diverse teams in high school
and junior college. When his father plunked a portable basketball hoop
at the end of their street, it attracted kids of all variety. The
Therriault house was a melting pot then and now -- Chad's girlfriend is
black, and Casey's is half Hispanic.
"I really don't think it fazes him that much," Julie said. "The
biggest obstacle was getting over the Southern accent. When he went on
his visit, he said, 'I don't understand what everybody's saying.'"
That was in May 2010, and despite the language barrier, Casey decided
he would attend. Then he started getting cold feet, thinking about
moving that far away from home. The jail experience had left him more
attached than ever to his girlfriend and family.
Julie read him the riot act.
"This is your only opportunity," she told Casey. "You better take it."
On July 5, Ed and his third son packed up and left Michigan for
Mississippi. They were dumbstruck by the heat, and in the dead of
summer, there weren't many players on campus or any formal workouts to
dive into. Casey called his mom crying twice, talking about coming home.
<div><div style="margin-left: 10px; width: 300px;">
<div style="width: 300px;"><cite>Therriault Family </cite>Therriault's parents are happy that their son has been given a second chance at Jackson State.</div></div></div>
"You
make a decision right now," she told him. "Get your ass in the car and
drive home, or stick with it. But don't call me again."
He never called again.
What followed was an unlikely but perfect marriage of player and
program. Casey's 3,600 yards of total offense and 41 total touchdowns
(31 passing, 10 running) made him the Southwestern Athletic Conference
Newcomer of the Year and the first-team all-SWAC quarterback. He was
second nationally in the Football Championship Subdivision in passing
yards and total offense, leading Jackson State to an 8-3 record and a
share of the SWAC East title.
A proud school with a passionate base and a gilded football heritage,
having produced the likes of Walter Payton and Lem Barney, Jackson
State had never had a standout white player before. There were a few
lesser players who came and went, but nobody with the ability of Casey.
The fans adored him. They nicknamed him "White Tiger." Teammates called him "Blue-Eyed Soul Brother."
He was never more popular than in leading Jackson State past rival
Southern 49-45. Four touchdowns were scored in the final three minutes
-- the last of them on a 28-yard pass by Casey to Rico Richardson with
two seconds left. Casey had driven the Tigers 60 yards in two plays for
the winning touchdown.
Afterward, everyone raved about Casey's poise. His dad knew where it came from.
"He told me one time, 'These defensive linemen used to scare the s---
out of me,'" Ed said. "'After I was looking at 15 years in prison,
those guys don't scare me.' He doesn't get jitters anymore. After you've
been scared like that, you don't get scared."
<hr style="width: 50%;">
Sarah Hernandez and Casey's parents attended one of Casey's home games this past season. Her description of the experience:
"It was intimidating, and not because of anything anyone said or
did," she said. "Nobody made us feel unwelcome at all. But it opened up
our eyes. I know now what a black person means when they say what it
feels like to be the only black in a room."
If her boyfriend ever had that feeling, it is gone now.
On a bright and breezy October Friday on the Jackson State campus,
Casey was moving through a crowded quad at ease. Girls called out his
name in flirty tones, but he pretended not to notice. It was homecoming
week, and the football team had gathered with the marching band and
homecoming court to help boost a United Way fundraising drive.
The white quarterback stood out amid the sea of black faces, yet seemed oblivious to it.
"He described it once as saying that he forgets he's white," Hernandez said.
At Jackson State, they don't care what color Casey Therriault is. Or
what happened in his past. They're happy the White Tiger has made an
unlikely home in a Mississippi oasis a great man dreamed of decades ago.
Edited by: Colonel_Reb 
