Central Georgia Sports ReportComment

Is Quintez Cephus perhaps headed back to Wisconsin? A campaign for his return has started, as has paperwork

Central Georgia Sports ReportComment
Is Quintez Cephus perhaps headed back to Wisconsin? A campaign for his return has started, as has paperwork

By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

          Current and former players are on a Twitter campaign to get Quintez Cephus back to Wisconsin after his acquittal on sexual assault charges.

          And it appears Cephus is more than open to the possibility.

          Stephen Meyer, one of Cephus’ attorneys, announced late Tuesday afternoon that a petition for readmission to Wisconsin has been filed, with a request that a decision be made by Thursday.

          Earlier Tuesday, a Twitter campaign to get the Stratford graduate – acquitted Friday in just 41 minutes after four days of testimony – back in a Wisconsin uniform got going.

          “#LetQTPlay” started Tuesday on Twitter, including former running back Dare Ogunbowale and defensive backs Faion Hicks and safety Scotty Nelson. Fans have joined in.

          Ogunbowale, a UW grad now with Tampa Bay in the NFL, appears to have started it, at 11:59 a.m. Tuesday.

          Others think Cephus would be crazy to return to the team and school they perceived as having abandoned him. Fans continue to express support for Cephus without the hashtag.

          Cephus was charged last August with two counts of sexual assault stemming from an April, 2018 incident. He was suspended from the team a few days after Tweeting that he would take a leave of absence from the team.

          Cephus filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Wisconsin for violating his constitutional rights for conducting a student investigation while he was unable to participate or defend himself while facing the criminal charges.

          Attorneys said then that the suit could be refiled after the criminal case’s conclusion.

          An original trial date in February was pushed back to July, and the four-day trial concluded last Friday with his acquittal after only 41 minutes of deliberation of an all-white jury.

          The entire Cephus case has put heat on UW chancellor Rebecca Blank, athletics director Barry Alvarez, as well as a number of people in the district attorneys office who pushed to prosecute the case amid a perception of politics and favoritism.

          That heat grew when the jury needed so little time to render him not guilty, just short of a year since he was charged.

          Wisconsin’s code states an expelled student can submit a written petition, in this case to Blank, who in cases of sexual assault must consult with the school’s Title IX coordinator. The athletics deputy Title IX coordinator is Terry Gawlik.

          News of the filing came as a bit of a surprise, since a Cephus attorney had said earlier Tuesday that it could be a few weeks before a decision about his future was made.

          The school has made no statement on the verdict, and head coach Paul Chryst’s first comments were over the weekend, ostensibly discussing the return to practice of wideout Danny Davis, who was part of the night of the incident and testified, and the returning wide receivers.

          “You have a really well respected, appreciated player is going through something,” he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Friday. “It was on a lot of guys’ minds. It has to. As far as who he was and what they felt about him and what he meant to them.

          “He was a connector. He crossed over into all the groups. He impacted a lot of people.”

          The news of the possible return came after the start of the Twitter campaign.

          Cephus has more than stayed in shape, training in Arizona for several months while awaiting the trial, and he told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on Monday that he was in the best shape of his life.

           A selection of Tuesday’s offerings on the campaign: