SBT: Clausen Cited for Transporting Alcohol

The South Bend Tribune report on Friday that freshman quarterback Jimmy Clausen was cited with transporting alcohol back in June.

“Indiana State Excise Police cited the 19-year-old Clausen and a 23-year-old outside the Belmont Beverage store at 1621 South Bend Ave., near the Notre Dame campus, police said.”

Clausen entered a pre-trial diversion program just as Derrell Hand and Kyle McAlarney, other Notre Dame athletes who have had recent run ins with the law, did. According to the Tribune, Clausen’s deal included a $170 fine and an agreement to not commit a similar offense for the time period of one year.  If Clausen fulfills both ends of the agreement, the charge will go away.

The entire situation does not seem serious and one would assume that if this occurred back in June it was already dealt with internally. What strikes me as odd is the timing of the report from the SBT. This incident happened in June, but it just for reported now.

It should be noted that the SBT is the same newspaper that ran a entire series of articles which were extremely critical of Clausen earlier this off-season which slammed Clausen for everything from his haircut to his announcement ceremony back in the spring of 2006. Now today’s report comes with the following opening:

Maybe someday Jimmy Clausen will make headlines for something he actually does on the football field — not for ornate announcements with stretch Hummers, not for clandestine elbow conditions, and, most recently, not for a minor scrape with the law.

I wonder what the Clausen clan did to tick off the SBT, but it seems that co-authors Joshua Stone and Eric Hansen took just a little bit too much enjoyment out of writing that opening.

Now the real fun will begin when the national media gets a hold of this and turns it into an expose of how Charlie Weis has lost control of the program or how Notre Dame is selling its soul for football glory. That is of course, unless that is part of this Sunday’s edition of the South Bend Tribune.