ANOTHER CORRUPT OFFICIAL

by Brian P. Foley, The College Baseball Blog

The Big Ten is going to have to answer some questions about football official Stephen Parmon. He has recently run into problems with bankruptcy, child abuse, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. The Big Ten does background checks on their officials so how did these four cases get let go by the conference?

The bankruptcy charge is the most glaring in terms of his job. This is an official who ran up a $429,000 worth of liabilities including two casinos before filing for bankruptcy. I know that it was legal gambling that he was involved with but just to be fooling around in a casino as an official is a big red flag. This year his crew was suspended for the final week of the season because Joe Tiller of Purdue filed an official complaint against them after a November 3rd game against Penn State. Before the Big Ten could suspend them, they officiated a highly competitive game on November 10th which saw them make a very poor call on Illinois' first touchdown. The crew was then suspended for the November 17th weekend.

The sad part of this story is that the bankruptcy story is not even the most important thing here. Stephen Parmon was accused of sexual harassment when working with the Chicago Police Department which ended up getting him fired in 1996. He has been accused of sexually abusing his 19-year-old niece and beating his wife at the time in a court hearing during 1994. The worst charge that Parmon has faced is beating three of his girlfriends' kids in 1997 with an electrical cord.

I believe that the Big Ten should be held accountable as these are some serious charges and situations that Mr. Parmon has been involved in. If you are interested in the full story you can click here for a full report from Yahoo Sports.