First it was Sean Sonderleiter. Then Bennie Sapp. I was just waiting – waiting for the day it would happen. Then, late last week the news came that I was dreading. The epidemic had spread from Iowa City to Ames and ISU athletics. Monday, the bad luck continued as the the outbreak claimed one more from Cyclone country. With the blink of an eye, the plague of had gone back to the home of the Hawkeyes.

Between the University of Iowa and Iowa State, five student-athletes have made the news regarding their behavior, and it hasn’t been good news. I was fine with it when it stayed over in Iowa City, because I’m the biggest Hawkeye-hater of all time, but then Nick Linder was charged with public intoxication last week. That didn’t really get to me too much, but then Omar Bynum was arrested for posession of marijuana and driving while intoxicated.

I was relieved to hear that Brody Boyd was working on his jump shot at an Iowa City bar over the weekend and got caught with a Bud Light in his hand instead of a Rawlings, but something still got to me. I thought our athletes were smart enough not to piss while in public?

Last winter, I contacted ISU men’s basketball coach Larry Eustachy about a story on ISU’s success off the court – staying out of trouble. He told me his guys in particular were great guys who “know right from wrong.” He said he and Dan McCarney recruit character when they look for athletes and there’s very high integrity among the coaches in the ISU athletic department. With two ISU athletes busted in a week, and as a journalist who’s always a little too curious, I’m beginning to wonder what’s going on.

Granted, it has to be tough to keep 125 grown men in line, as McCarney does, for the most part. I don’t deny that. It’s just ironic to me that these things are popping up at a faster rate than I can remember.

Of course, it is summer, which often means plenty of slow sports days if you’re a sports editor. You know it’s bad when one of your main stories is a Seattle Mariners player turning down Viagra for an advertisement opportunity, as was the case with ESPN a couple weeks ago.

It gets even slower when you’re covering a university that has no sports in season at the moment.

I have a few theories for all of this nonsense.

All of the drama in the Iowa sports scene could all just be a media conspiracy – one to fill the sports pages around the country. You would think someone would have clued me in on that one.

Supposedly, we’re just blowing this stuff all over the presses and TV screens for the fun of it. Supposedly, we call media relations solely to see what dirt we can dig up. Stadium renovations? That’s boring . . . anybody get busted for pot?

I could lecture anyone with this belief about how we’re serving the public, but I’ll spare you. Because I made the rules to this theorizing session, we throw that one out.

It could be a contest between the Ames and the Iowa City cops to see who can bust the most college athletes. I can see it now: 10 points for a football player (it’s too close to the season to shove under the rug), eight points for a basketball player (add two for a starter from last season), seven points for a wrestler (the legendary Cael Sanderson is still eligible), and four points for a baseball or softball player (as not to give an advantage to Iowa City).

Iowa City leads 28-20 in the first-annual Piss Off Your Fellow Sports Information Director Challenge, heading into the fourth quarter.

All and all, it’s probably just a case of youthful men hanging out in Ames or Iowa City for the summer to train and some bad luck. If it were a perfect world, I wouldn’t have a job . . . at least not a very interesting one.

Jeff Raasch is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Odebolt. He is the sports editor of the Daily.