Oregonian is goin hard at him
There is no mystery here. There is no question mark. There is only one good reason that exiled Oregon star tight end
Colt Lyerla is telling the world that he was once promised a house and a car for his family if he'd attend college in Eugene.
Lyerla wants to burn the house down.
Lyerla told
a reporter writing a long-form piece on the rise and fall of his career that he wishes he'd stayed with his original decision and picked USC over Oregon out of Hillsboro High.
Grab a match. Strike it. Then, read the gasoline for yourself:
Their enthusiasm dampened when an unofficial adviser weighed in. Lyerla declines publicly to identify the man, a powerful University of Oregon booster known to the family. The adviser made the benefits of that decision clear. If Lyerla went to Oregon, "I was promised a house, a car, all these things."
Lyerla claims that this unnamed booster played him. Which is only to say that Lyerla is assuming the identity that he most frequently picked when things went wrong — victim.
Not his fault that he blew off team obligations. Not his problem that he ran late to workouts. He's not the problem, even if 32 NFL teams with draft picks tried to tell him on draft day that he wasn't worth the trouble. He was duped and innocent. Lyerla believes his tweet about Sandy Hook is why he went undrafted.
That cocaine-possession arrest?
Too much time on his hands in a college town, it turns out. As if time and his own free hands and a college town were the real culprits.
"It ruined my whole life," he told the reporter about that arrest.
No, Colt. You did that. Every bit of it. Also, you now have a chance to salvage your life, and turn this personal story of trial and tragedy into something better. There are so many people in Oregon who still wish and hope you'll find your way. There's even a name for those people: suckers.
Include me among them.