What were they thinking?

In the world of covering ‘cops and robbers,’ it is all too easy to stumble across incidents where one’s initial reaction is something along the lines of “What was this fool thinking?”

The coach's wife

It even occurs on occasion that a story crops up that somehow manages to spill over into the world of sports – which somehow manages to attract attention on the grounds that something involving a ballplayer must be more important than something affecting a “real” person.

YET I COULDN’T help but chuckle at the pair of stories that cropped up Tuesday on the Chicago news scene – both of which have me thinking there’s a new couple that ought to be kept as far apart as possible to ensure they never spawn and create young’uns who would be a combination of themselves.

Of course, the woman in this pairing is already married – and her husband is the one who comes off looking somehow absurd because of her actions.

I’m referring, of course, to the spouse of the football coach at Antioch Community High School – who also happens to be a teacher (special ed) at that school. She now faces criminal charges (misdemeanor) related to computer hacking.

Not that hers is any kind of conventional case of someone who thinks they are entitled to break into someone’s computer system and tamper with materials.

FOR PROSECUTORS IN suburban Lake County say she got ahold of an administrative password and used it to start altering the grades of students. Some 64 young people in all. Coincidentally, many of them were members of the football team that her husband coached.

Although it seems that she is telling police he had no involvement in the matter, and prosecutors haven’t come up with any evidence indicating that he should also be facing criminal charges.

Not exactly KW 'clone'



Which is something that confuses me. It makes me suspect that there is some significant fact we do not yet know, and that when it does come out we’re going to wind up viewing this whole debacle in a completely different manner.

I also find it interesting to read the various statements that indicate the students’ actual grades have been restored, and that it wasn’t a matter of academically-ineligible students playing football, but one of trying to bolster students with mediocre grades into slightly higher ones.

AS THOUGH THERE really is no problem aside from one teacher-turned-alleged hacker – who now faces criminal charges, the likelihood of a fine and the near-certainty that she’s going to lose her own teaching position.

By comparison, the Kenny Williams burglary seems so logical and straightforward. For it seems that someone broke into the home of the Chicago White Sox general manager.

That person took a nap, heated up some pizza for himself, defrosted a lobster, and eventually left wearing one of Williams’ suits AND the big gaudy ring that the White Sox gave to everyone who was connected to their World Series champion ballclub from 2005.

That alone would have been a prize that would have caused the sports memorabilia market to go berserk. EXCEPT for the fact that the burglar managed to drop an identification bracelet in Williams’ residence. Police knew who they were looking for.

AND THEY MADE the arrest when the man actually returned to the Williams residence and gave police his real name when they caught him trying to peek into the windows.

It seems the man has a prior criminal record – a whole string of arrests for knuckleheaded moments. Although the idea that he returned to the scene of this particular moment makes this one stand out.

That’s not usually what someone does if their intent is to commit some sort of felony act or gain some goods that could be sold off for medium-sized bucks.

It actually makes me wonder if we’re going to find out someday that the man involved in this particular incident is not mentally stable enough to stand trial on the residential burglary charge he now faces. The fact that his identification bracelet was from a hospital may be some evidence in that direction.

ALL OF WHICH manages to make people like Antoin Rezko look like even more of an afterthought; even on a day when U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve blatantly rejected his request to be sentenced to time served.

Ten-and-a-half years in a federal correctional center. Even with his roughly four years of real time already served, that will involve another few years of being locked away. Yet so boring compared to the other two who came up Tuesday.

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