The USC cornerback came clean Wednesday and confessed to lying about saving his drowning nephew from a pool over the weekend, a fabrication he used to explain his dual ankle injury.
Josh Shaw's ankle story has come back to bite him, and USC will probably feel a chomp, too.
The Trojans’ star cornerback came clean Wednesday and admitted he had fabricated a heroic story about saving his drowning nephew from a pool over the weekend — a story the university itself published to explain the team captain’s dual ankle injury.
Southern Cal has suspended Shaw indefinitely as a result of his confession and apology.
“We are extremely disappointed in Josh,” USC football coach Steve Sarkisian said. “He let us all down. As I have said, nothing in his background led us to doubt him when he told us of his injuries, nor did anything after our initial vetting of his story.”
A day earlier, Sarkisian had told reporters that the sensational pool-rescue story had been contradicted and was being vetted by the university. Soon after that, TMZ posted a story alleging that Shaw’s name had surfaced in a police report. Shaw has hired Los Angeles attorney Donald Etra, who issued a statement on behalf of his new client on Wednesday afternoon: “On Saturday August 13, I injured myself in a fall. I made up a story about this fall that was untrue. I was wrong to not tell the truth. I apologize to USC for this action on my part. My USC coaches, the USC Athletic Department, and especially coach Sarkisian have all been supportive of me during my college career and for that, I am very grateful.”
Suddenly USC’s vaunted football program is entering a new season amid a wild scandal that is only now beginning to unravel. The swashbuckling tale about the big man on campus leaping from a balcony to save a 7-year-old nephew who couldn’t swim drew far more attention to USC than a less dramatic cover-up would have done.
Shaw, a senior and team captain, delivered the story to the university, which disseminated the story on The Ripsit Blog, an official site of USC’s athletic department. The story has since been removed.
USA Today quoted an unnamed source at the school saying that there was skepticism about Shaw’s story that didn’t stop the school from publishing the account, which sounded like a rough treatment for an action-hero film.
Hours before the confession was disclosed, Sarkisian had sounded relieved to let his superiors sort out the matter at a school where the football team is a piece of history as well as a massive economic engine. “In this day and age of college football and head coaches’ responsibilities, I’d be foolish not to push everything up the ladder,” Sarkisian told reporters after the team’s practice, where Shaw was not present and teammates said little about him. “I think we learned that a couple years ago with a couple other high-profile coaches, so everything I’ve ever done when things come across my desk is to push them to campus authorities and let them do their due diligence.”
TMZ’s report Tuesday claimed Shaw had appeared in a Los Angeles Police Department report that said a man fitting his description was seen “shimmying” down the side of a building by Shaw’s girlfriend’s apartment. Shaw was not a suspect in the alleged burglary at the complex, TMZ said.
To see a Southern Cal football player fall from the sky is nothing new to those familiar with the program. Brian Cushing and Mark Sanchez used to leap off apartment rooftops into pools with teammates off campus. In 2005, Pete Carroll, then the Trojans coach, and tailback LenDale White staged a fake argument, at the end of which White pretended to quit the team. A dummy emblazoned with White’s No. 21 then appeared atop a building overlooking the practice field. The Trojans, including then-offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin, were tricked by Carroll’s Halloween hoax as some believed that White jumped due to his anger with Carroll. As it turned out, no one was really hurt.
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