Josh Shirley officially a Husky

So the news that was expected for a while became official today - Josh Shirley is now a Husky.  This has been greeted by cheers from many Husky fans and jeers from Bruins fans (and some Duck and Coug fans too).  It's worth taking a little bit of time to review what we know and what we don't know about Shirley and how he came to be a Husky.

First off, Shirley is a well-regarded talent.  He's a 6'2", 220 lb hitting machine, likely to end up at OLB or DE (depending on scheme and how his body develops).  He was a high profile recruit, a 4-star guy sought by a number of high profile programs:  USC, Notre Dame, Miami (FL), Tennessee, Cal and Arizona among many others.  In the end it came down to UCLA and Washington, and he chose UCLA.

And the story would end there, except that on June 23, he and two fellow incoming Bruin recruits (cousins Shaquille and Paul Richardson) were arrested on felony theft charges for an incident on the UCLA campus.

This is when it starts to get more interesting - while the Richardsons had to each post $20K in bail, Shirley was released without bail.  A hint perhaps that Shirley was a lesser suspect?

UCLA moved quickly and decisively, removing all three from Summer school (an act which revoked the letter of intent of each, making them all recruitable athletes again) and laid down strict terms for them to be re-admitted to the school and the football team, but not before next January.  Neuheisel's statement read in part:

The three young men know they made a terrible mistake. We expect our players to behave a certain way and there are consequences when they don’t. Paul, Shaquille and Josh are paying a steep price for their lapse in judgment. They will not be allowed to enroll in school this fall and will not have the opportunity to begin their UCLA academic and athletic careers.

Whether they are allowed to enroll for Winter Quarter will be determined at a later date. That decision will be based on several factors, including their behavior.

From that point, speculation swirled about whether those three would seek to enroll for Fall quarter elsewhere, with much of the talk focused on whether Shirley might end up at Washington, his 2nd choice.

Earlier this week, the District Attorney passed on prosecution and punted the case to the City Attorney's office.  And today, official word came that Shirley had enrolled at the UW.  Sark said in a statement:

We are very aware of the circumstances surrounding Josh. We have done our due diligence and truly feel that this is not indicative of his true character or the way that he was raised. We are excited about the opportunity Josh has to excel on the football field, in the classroom and in his personal life in our environment, around our people at the University of Washington.

So what do we make of this development?  Has Sark, who has up to this point demonstrated firm discipline in handling the football team, compromised his standards to bring in the talented Shirley?  Did Neuheisel and UCLA over react in removing Shirley from school and preventing him from re-enrolling until January?

The answer is, unfortunately, we don't know.  There is no police report available to review at this point to see in detail exactly what authorities think Shirley did.  All we know is what listed above - he was arrested, released without bail, and the DA has chosen not to prosecute.  The City Attorney has yet to make a decision about whether to pursue the case or not, but it's looking quite possible that no charges will be brought against Shirley.  If that's the case, essentially what we have is the contrast between how UCLA reacted to Shirley's involvement (whatever that involvement was) and Washington's reaction.

Sark and the UW had a relationship with Shirley already, having recruited him for probably a year or more leading up to last February's Signing Day, and Sark certainly has plenty of connections in SoCal, so there shouldn't be any question that he had ways of digging into the situation to try to figure out as much as he could about Shirley and what went on - I don't think Neuheisel had much (if any) edge there on information gathering.

So then it comes down to reaction.  And we have to ask ourselves a few questions: do we really know who made the decision at UCLA to dismiss them from Summer school?  Can we be sure this was purely Neuheisel's call?  Or is it possible that the AD and/or people in the UCLA administration put their feet down and dictated this reaction?  Given that the incident happened on the UCLA campus, there may have been additional pressure to take strong action against the accused.  And it's important to note that Neuheisel still left the door open for all three to return, with conditions.

It may well be the case that Sarkisian has put conditions on Shirley concerning his enrolling at the UW and joining the Huskies too.

Unfortunately we might not get more clarification on this matter for a while.  Freshmen players are off-limits to reporters at the UW.  Sark's statement was devoid of details, other then an assurance that they're OK with what they know about Shirley and the incident.  I would hope that reporters drill down further the next time they talk with Sark, but I doubt we'll get much more out of him that what he put in his statement.

So we wait to see if the City Attorney's office will press charges; if they do, we should get access to a police report detailing the accusations; if not, I don't think we'll see any such details.  Down the road, I would expect we'll get Shirley's own version of the events, but that may be several months (if ever) away.

I'll say this - given Sark's track record so far in terms of team disciplinary issues, I have to believe that he's convinced that whatever Shirley did wasn't a major mistake.  I don't know if that means that he thinks Shirley was guilty only of hanging around the wrong guys at the wrong time, or if he thinks Shirley was more actively involved in the theft, but thinks it was an out-of-character mistake.  I would suspect the former, but chances are we may never know.