You might know that I made my debut as a university instructor this year. That’s over now, which is probably for the best. I’m disappointed, though, that I didn’t have this guy in my class.

STATE COLLEGE — A Penn State student upset with a B- was arrested Tuesday for threatening to put his professor in a wheelchair unless he got a better grade, according to the criminal complaint.

Apostalo Michael Tsirogiannis, 20, of State College, was arraigned Tuesday afternoon on misdemeanor counts of terroristic threats and harassment before District Judge Jonathan Grine. He is free on $10,000 unsecured bail.

Police said they were contacted during the weekend by the dean of Penn State’s Smeal College of Business about a student who sent an e-mail to visiting assistant professor Lukas Roth.

In the complaint filed against Tsirogiannis, Penn State police detailed the contents of the e-mail.

“Lukas I am going to warn you one last chance I am going to ask I want a better than a B-,” the e-mail read. “If I see this on my elion account I swear to god I am going to (expletive) put you in a wheelchair when I see you. You will regret it and I don’t care if they kick me out of school.”

Tsirogiannis goes on to accuse the professor of cheating him on a test and refusing to “get cheated out of a letter grade.

“Don’t (expletive) around you will pay trust me I don’t care if I go to jail as long as I put you in a wheelchair,” the email stated, according to the criminal complaint.

Police contacted Tsirogiannis on Monday and he admitted to being angry when he sent the email, the complaint states.

“He stated he felt he worked hard to achieve his grade and it should have been better than a B-,” police said.

Tsirogiannis is scheduled for a preliminary hearing at 8:30 a.m. May 21. Penn State public information officials could not provide information about his status with the university Tuesday.

It’s real in Happy Valley.

I wonder if LeBron feels at all similar today: He worked hard to achieve something great in these playoffs, and it should’ve ended better than a second-round knock-out. That said, we all saw this coming. Or at least I did. This reminds me of how I’m always right about everything. I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you as well.

Before I do — and the small fraction of you who care probably already know — but my wife had a baby last week, and we’re pretty sure I’m the father. My daughter seems to be healthy, so I’m happy. I’d post a picture, but you’ve seen babies, so you probably know roughly what she looks like. Thanks.

Anyway, back to me. I thought it would be fun to go back through some stuff I wrote recently to see how often I was right. And I was right again — it was fun. See for yourself.

May 15, 2008: “These kids play basketball good.”

This is from the little blurb I wrote on our high school All-American team. The bad grammar was intentional. Do you people not know me by now? Grammar aside, this is CORRECT.

May 7, 2008: “I’m eating guacamole right now.”

I totally was. I had more last night, in fact. I stay eating guacamole. Guacamole is my sh*t. CORRECT.

April 25, 2008: “The first game action I actually saw was DeShawn doing his Ray Allen impression.”

Taken out of context — which is how I like to get down — and given the course of recent events, this statement from my Cavs-Wizards Game 3 recap would seem to imply that DeShawn Stevenson was in the midst of disappearing from an entire playoff series. That’s not what I meant, but I’ll go ahead and bite it on this one. INCORRECT. Dammit.

April 18, 2008: “The Cavs will win 48 regular-season games, beat someone like Orlando or Toronto in the first round, and lose to Boston or Detroit or Miami in the second.”

This, from my Cavs-Wiz series preview, is actually reprinted from the Cavs season preview I did last fall. It looked pretty good a month ago, and it looks better now. Especially when you consider I wrote the following in the very same post:

“My guess is that, when we look back on LeBron’s career in 10 years, we’ll talk about how this was the season his Cavs took a half-step backward, because he simply couldn’t put an entire roster on his back two years running. It might even be the year before the year he decided he’d have to leave Cleveland if he ever wanted to win anything.”

CORRECT. Obviously.

I’m not the only one, of course. Lang wrote about it earlier today in his Links-free Links, which predictably inspired Myles to chirp up about LeBron’s FG percentage while conveniently overlooking the fact that if he had, say, an actual offensive system and/or a 20-ppg center and/or a coach with two fistfuls of championship rings, perhaps he might not have had to work against septuple teams all series. But I digress.

(As a side note, I’ve decided that from now on, when Myles and I argue about something, we will refer to each other as The Sports Gal. Which means that we will only refer to each other as The Sports Gal. Keep an eye out for that.)

Anyway, yes. He missed a lot of shots and forced a lot of shots and committed too many turnovers and missed too many free throws. Yes he did. He still averaged 27, 8 and 6 for the series, with minimal help, against the best defensive team in the League, and played his best game on the road in Game 7. Which reminds me of how right I was when I wrote this:

May 7, 2008: “LeBron LeBron LeBron LeBron.”

He’s awesome. He makes great commercials. Even the terrorists love him (click on the trailer and watch ’til the end). CORRECT.

April 10, 2008: “You’re really good. But I’m not honestly, honestly not sure if you’re more ‘valuable’ to your team than Paul Pierce. Does that make me crazy? Kevin?”

Definitive? No. But nonetheless CORRECT.

October 11, 2007: SLAM: So explain how you and Rodney linked up in the first place, and why you feel comfortable with him playing a role in your future.

OJ: He’s just like a mentor, you know? Like I said, my father in and out of jail, my mom is working, she really don’t got time to sit back and—she does think things through for me, but I want to take some of that off of her, you know, ’cause this gets real stressful. Rodney, he’s from L.A., he knows about this game. Like you said, he’s been in an incident where he’s messed up before, and just because he’s messed up doesn’t mean he’s not a good guy. You know, he messed up trying to help some kids. You know, rules are rules, and there’s so many rules out there, you could break some not even knowing that you are, just trying to help someone. So from that standpoint, it’s an opportunity. I want to give people an opportunity. I feel like I can feel people out, feel a vibe from them, and I feel like in my best interests, it’s good to have them around, just to help me out in day-to-day life situations. At one point I was in Cincinnati, where I almost felt like I was on my own. You know, I met him my seventh, going into my eighth grade year at ABCD, he was introduced through my grandfather, and we’d just talk on the phone, talk about my game…

SLAM: Dwain introduced you guys?

OJ: Uh-huh. Rodney would give me certain DVDs on different point guards, different players in the League, just try to help analyze my game and get me better. I guess people think you know, you’re good, you must got a workout guy, you must have people, but in my situation, it wasn’t like that. Everyone thought that, so no one really reached out and tried to give me a hand on my game. Like, “I know he’s good, you know, he’s got people doing that.” So, from there, we got closer, grew closer as far as a mentor relationship, and I don’t know, I guess we’re still friends, still have a good relationship.

SLAM: People assume that his motives are selfish, that he’s only in it for the payday down the road. Did it take a long time for you to get past that possibility?

OJ: Yeah, yeah, of course. Always. But like I said, I’m human. You get certain vibes from different people, and like I said, I’ve been through some negative things, things that happened that, maybe, at the end of, it’s like, “This kid’s probably not going to make it through.” You know, “This kid’s bad.” You know, I don’t know what people think, just, that’s what I feel. And he was still there, like, “It’ll be alright, you know, it’s good.” You hear what I’m sayin’? Just mentoring me through different problems. I didn’t have a father, I moved away from my mom, my grandfather was doing his thing, going back and forth to West Virginia making sure our traveling team was good, you get what I’m saying? So I’m growing up fast, I’m 15, 16, almost handling things on my own. So, like I said, Rodney, he’s a good guy. I got a lot of trust in him, I think he’ll be able to make the right decisions. I don’t think he’ll do anything stupid, that could hurt me or anything.

SLAM: Yeah—I guess even if Rodney was only in it for the money, it’s still in his best interests that you succeed, become a number one draft pick and make as much money as possible, right?

OJ: And also, like, who else would I have around me? Just, for example—what, I’m supposed to just do it on my own? Or, who? If I have my friends from my neighborhood? You know, “They’re thugs, you got a posse.” (laughs) Like a rap crew or something. And my family, you know, you got a father in and out of jail, and my mom, you know, she works hard, got other kids to raise, uncles is on or off drugs. And I know it’s hard, but sometimes your family can be your worst enemy almost, you know what I’m saying? Like, a lot of times, they can have their own motives? And I really don’t want to put my family in that type of situation where, I just hate ‘em, I don’t like ‘em no more because they messed me over, you know what I mean? So I’ll take my opportunity to help feed my family, and once I’m good and successful, give them the opportunity to come up off that, help ‘em out, you know, but other than that, like I said, I’m kinda on the grind. Working out, going to school, trying to better myself mentally or physically, working out, lifting weights. You know, one day you become grown, you can’t be a puppet all your life.

INCONCLUSIVE.

This is from the OJ Mayo Q&A I ran last fall.

This is a weird one for me.

I don’t watch the WW Follower very often, but I watched this entire OTL segment on their website. It’s strange seeing a lengthy, serious piece of investigative journalism broadcast on one of the most-watched network/website platforms in the universe, and being on a first-name basis with every single person featured in the show. It’s even stranger when every single one of them looks guilty.

Guilty of what isn’t all that clear.

Here’s what I took away from all that:

1) Great, thorough reportage. Imagine if ESPN’s sister network, ABC, or any of its major network brethren, had actual news bureaus with endless resources and did actual serious reporting about real news that really affected people in the world? Well, I just clicked on abcnews.com, and among their lead, front-page “news” stories are a photo gallery of “Stars Without Makeup!” and the latest on what those dim bulbs on The View think about politics. So never mind. We’re all going to hell.

2) Thorough as this story was, it basically boiled down to one disgruntled dude — a dude with a felony rap for slinging, and who’d been keeping an alarmingly complete paper trail of credit card receipts that weren’t even his — coming forward (some might even say “snitching,” though I won’t) to “tell his story.” I’m not passing judgment, of course. Just sharing.

3) I’ve been annoyed but not surprised that many in the mainstream sports media (no capitals, please) feel that one way to deal with this issue would be to crack down on the kids. And I’ve been pleasantly surprised that most of the folks in our neck of the woods have seen this story for what it is: Not really news. Agents look for any advantage to sign big-time clients, and they use runners to pay kids off. Poor kids who have essentially been legally barred from making a living in this country with their one transcendent talent take the cash to at least start to make up for how long others have been taking advantage of their talent. The world turns. Whatever. Rodney Guillory may be shady, but he’s not evil. OJ may have (once again) misjudged his friends, or perhaps he’s just working the system; either way, people (this magazine included) have been using his name for profit for about six years now. Seems like the least this kid should do is make some of that money back.

Let me leave you with something I didn’t actually say, but with which I could not agree more:

“All I listen to is vets, you’re fresh off the step… I’m used to the 1,2 check, not the 1,2 step” — Peedi Peedi, “Get Busy,” Rising Down

From my favorite verse off my favorite track off (probably) my favorite album of the year. I’m pretty sure he’s talking to DeShawn. CORRECT.