The news first hit the Internet on coachingsearch.com, naming former NFL player James Willis as the leading candidate in UL’s search for a new defensive coordinator.
Commenting on the news, ESPN1420.com reports:
The 41-year-old Willis played his college football at Auburn and was a 5th round draft pick of the Green Bay Packers in the 1993 NFL draft. Willis played for three different NFL teams plus a team in the now-defunct XFL. After his playing career, he returned to Auburn to finish his degree requirements.
Willis has coached at Rhode Island, Temple and Auburn before spending one year as Associate Head Coach for Nick Saban at Alabama and was on the staff when ‘Bama beat Texas for the National Championship. He then spent time on Tommy Tuberville’s staff as the defensive coordinator at Texas Tech, but resigned before the 2011 Ticket City Bowl following an alleged domestic disturbance. He has been coaching in the United Football League.
Fox 34 News in Lubbock, Texas, reported in June 2011 that Willis pleaded guilty to a charge of assault, domestic violence and was sentenced to six months deferred probation. The station reported that Willis had to attend anger management classes and serve 30 hours of community service. Citing a Wolfforth Police Report, the station said that an officer responded to the Willis home on the morning of Dec. 22, 2010, in reference to a report of domestic violence:
Shalane Willis claimed her husband slapped her, hit her in the nose and threw her on the bed during an argument. Mrs. Willis says she ran out the front door to the neighbors' house to call 911.
After the domestic abuse allegations surfaced Tech head football coach Tommy Tuberville said the reported abuse was not a factor in Willis leaving the program.
"That was never even discussed when we sat down and talked about his future," Tuberville said in Dallas, during the week of practice ahead of the team's bowl game. "He will work through those and everybody has some kind of problems. They seem to be when you read stuff, more serious than what they are, but he is a good guy and has a good family."
MAY 21 Gambit columnist Clancy DuBos writes about the Mother's Day shooting, and how the stages of shock and blame and healing mirror those traveled by the same city following Hurricane Katrina. The city will recover, just as it did following the storm, by reaching out to help the people injured most seriously by the event, DuBos writes. It's how we heal, he says.
MAY 21 Here's a post on the Advocate (but buried on a subpage, not on the front) that reports something Louisiana Voice reported some time ago: a top DOE official lives in Los Angeles and "commutes" to Baton Rouge. The positioning of the story caused a stir on Facebook Monday, with several posters asking if the Advocate was covering someone's hiney. Sentell's stories on DOE are notoriously soft, and this one is no different: don't expect any hard questions in here.
MAY 21 Here's another post from blogger Tom Aswell about the "course choice" program. He's already reported on kids being signed up without their consent or knowledge, and has more here: For example, he tells of a six-year-old who was signed up for high school Latin. He also digs a little deeper into the sister companies of the main one operating in Louisiana; all of them seem to have complaints against them. Stinky.
MAY 21 Given the 80 percent cut in higher ed funding since he's been in office, it's clear Gov. Jindal would rather give tax cuts to out of state companies than have a functioning system, blogger Dayne Sherman argues in this post. The cuts have been such a disaster, Sherman says, that it will take 30 years to fix what's been broken. He says he believes the aim is to shut down most of the schools before Jindal leaves in 2016.
MAY 21 Blogger CB Forgotston says there are too many elections in Louisiana, and they're costing us too much money. The proof is in the pudding: turnout for most of these nonsensical pollings gets worse and worse, CB opines, even as millions of dollars that could be spent on health care or higher ed go down the tubes. The legislature must take action to stem the tide of pointless elections, he says.
MAY 21 Here's an interesting investigative piece by WVUE on the retirement benefits of some Jefferson Parish public employees. According to the story, the taxpayers are paying 100 percent of the retirement contributions of employees who started work prior to a certain date in April 1986 -- and have done for more than 30 years. It costs the parish millions annually, and might not be legal, the story reports.
MAY 21 This post on Bayou Buzz provides insight from Louisiana's intrepid pollster, Bernie Pinsonat, on the winners and losers from this year's legislative session. But to hear Bernie tell it, there's almost nuttin but losers: Jindal, the Republican party, the Fiscal Hawks all get big goose eggs in his win column.
MAY 20 This post on The Lens takes a look at a huge (either $500K or $250K) bill that one NOLA charter now has for school lunches. The RSD says the charter group didn't fill out the proper paperwork for federal reimbursement, but the story details how the RSD didn't ensure the people running the charter had the proper training, despite requests from hapless charter employees trying to fill out forms. Either way, somebody's asleep at the wheel.
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