Former Nebraska and Rams running back Lawrence Phillips is already in prison for a 31 year sentence for numerous charges, including assault. Now he’s being suspected of murdering his cell mate.
What an utter waste of talent. There’s many reasons to hate Tom Osborne, but if Mr. Family values had kicked Phillips off the team at Nebraska, maybe some common sense would have gotten into Phillips’ thick skull. Phillips would have still been drafted, but might have fallen further than 6th.
Yeah, that’s disappointing. The bit about Coach Osborne apparently being interested enough in winning that he kept that scumbag on “Big Red.” I always liked Tom Osborne (certainly when contrasted with the likes of his nemesis in Norman - “Bootlegger’s Boy” Barry Switzer) but keeping Lawrence Phillips on his team in the mid-'90s is a blot on Coach Osborne’s record, if you ask me.
When the Rams drafted Phillips, they quietly approached public relations agencies in St. Louis and asked how his image could be rehabilitated. Every single agency told the Rams the same thing: that Phillips already had two strikes against him, and it didn’t matter how many hospitalized kids he visited or how many charities he fronted, the only way to rehabilitate his image was to rehabilitate himself.
Phillips played 25 games for the Rams before they cut him in mid-season. He hasn’t learned anything since.
As a Husker fan, won’t the Lawrence Phillips story ever die? I really wanted to close the book on that chapter… like in 1996.
I vigorously opposed him being brought back to the team in 1995. If Osborne wanted to help him by “keeping the structure of football in his life”, then sit out a year, keep your nose clean, earn your way back. Call me on my rose-colored glasses, but I do believe Osborne thought he could “save” LP. And I’m quite positive he regrets doing that: some people you just can’t reach.
I never thought bringing him back was worth the storm we’d endure. We had Tommie Frazier, Ahman Green and 2-3 other RBs who would’ve started at 90% of the schools. Behind a line that I could’ve gotten 1000 yards. 1995 Huskers were possibly the best college [URL=“http://www.huskermax.com/rating.html”]team ever, we didn’t need him.
Bump. He’s been found dead in his jail cell, probably of suicide.