Steven Walker turned himself in last night (photo on the page). He had apparently been on the run since Friday night. The initial reports said Walker was a member of the Pitt team.
Walker, a three-year starting quarterback at Buchtel, is listed as a defensive back on the 2005 roster at the University of Pittsburgh, according to the athletics department’s Web site.
University officials could not be reached for comment Saturday.
Obviously, it was later corrected that Walker was not on the 2005 roster, and had, in fact been dismissed from the team in December 2004. Presumably, this page was where they pulled that info. It’s a sloppy page. It says 2004 roster (a dumb error by the reporter, especially when the 2005 football media guide doesn’t list him(PDF)), but lists the new coaching staff. If you look now, you will see that Steven Walker is not listed.
That was a rather sloppy scrub job this morning by the Pitt Athletic Department on a couple counts. First, there is the good old, reliable Google Cache to show Walker was listed even yesterday. Second, each player has a weblinked bio. The pages are arranged alphabetically by class. So, on the 2004 roster, Freshman Tyler Tipton was before Walker and Dave Weber was after. If you look at the end portion of the URL for each, you will see a “PLAYER_ID=” and a 4 digit number. For Tipton it is 2447 and Weber is 2449. These numbers had been in simple order, butsuddenlyy 2448 is gone. A check of #2448 now shows an empty bio page (not to mention the cached page confirms the same link). That individual bio page, was where the photo of Walker in his Pitt uni was pulled. Finally, there is still the PDF version of the 2004 roster page.
Maybe now might be a good time to update the roster pages on the top of the football section to reflect 2005.
Still, the damage was done. The TV Reports, like this one from Sunday evening (Windows Media) led with identifying him as a present day Panther.
Walker’s arraignment was this morning, but I haven’t found a report on how he pled or anything else at this point.
More when I can and there is more.
