TULANE STANDOUT HAS A LONG, HARD FALL

Sure, Toney Converse has only himself to blame, but his fall from
grace is awful sad to contemplate.

Until Converse was suspended from the Tulane football team for
unspecified "violations of team policy" a little less than two years
ago, it seemed that fate had smiled upon him.

He had been Tulane's leading rusher for the two previous seasons. His
best year came in 1998, when Tulane was unbeaten, won the Liberty Bowl
and was ranked 9th in the nation.

Now he is doing 18 years in the state pen, no doubt much changed from
the kid who went all sappy when coach Tommy Bowden moved to Clemson
just before the Liberty Bowl.

Emerging from the team's valedictory meeting with the coach, Converse
said, "Everybody was trying to be a man, but we felt it in out hearts.
He was like a father figure and it's hard to lose someone like that."

After the next year, Converse was seventh on Tulane's all-time yardage
list, but he never got to play as a senior. While on suspension from
the team in May 2000, he was arrested when police raided his mother's
house in River Ridge and caught him flushing cocaine down the john.

He came up for trial in the middle of the 2000 football season, and
escaped drug charges by pleading guilty to obstruction of justice. As
a tailback, he was history.

The experience did not discourage him from the drug trade. After
someone snitched to the Sheriff's Office, Converse was caught in a
sting in April last year when he was videotaped selling a rock to an
undercover deputy.

Deputies were evidently keen to make sure they had the goods on
Converse, who was taped three more times selling cocaine. The next
time they set him up, in May of last year, undercover deputies moved
in to make an arrest.

When Converse made a run for it, you might think that, having eluded
so many linebackers in his time, he would not likely succumb to a
tackle from a 30-year veteran of the sheriff's department. Lt. Al
McNally, brought him down, however, outside a gas station in Metairie,
not all that far from East Jefferson High School, where Converse
graduated five years ago. So it was off to the slammer.

Defense attorney Russell Stegeman argued at trial that Converse had
been targeted because he was a football star. Deputies should have
arrested Converse after the first deal instead of stringing out the
investigation until he could be charged with four counts of
distribution and one of possession with intent, according to Stegeman.

Converse faced a minimum sentence of 15 years; Judge Joan Benge gave
him 18.

That ought to have satisfied all but most the rabid advocates of harsh
retribution for drug dealers, but Jefferson Parish prosecutors wanted
more, arguing at a hearing this week that Converse, as a second
offender, should be sentenced to 60 years.

Prosecutors generally seem to feel it is their job to press for the
maximum sentence allowed by law, and maybe pity isn't part of their
job description.

Still, it requires a remarkable hardness of heart not to be satisfied
when a 23-year-old is sent to prison for 18 years, and Benge rejected
the proposition that she had been too lenient, citing Converse's youth
and pointing out that the state Legislature is finally recognizing the
folly of imposing savagely long sentences for drug offenses when the
prisons are overcrowded anyway.

Stegeman wanted the sentence reduced to the minimum 15 years, but
Benge said Converse deserved more because he referred on one of the
videotapes to "my people in Texas," which suggested he was a serious
dealer.

Former football stars, Benge pointed out, should not be treated any
better or worse than other criminals. Converse, having squandered the
talents that might have been his ticket to legitimate prosperity, is
just another dope pusher now.

He is the stupid jock who threw it all away, and maybe he got what he
deserved. But, with that great Tulane season so fresh in the memory,
it boggles the mind that Converse has come to this.