Felony drug charge sours UNLV on ex-Cheyenne star

Steve Guiremand

Thursday, Aug. 30, 2001 | 10:33 a.m.

Former Cheyenne High and University of Tennessee football star Lynn McGruder won't be playing for UNLV after all.

Rebuffed in his attempt to walk on at UNLV last week because of pending drug charges, McGruder instead enrolled at defending national champion Oklahoma on Wednesday afternoon.

"He's in," said McGruder's cousin and former UNLV star Hunkie Cooper. "Oklahoma has signed him to a full ride. Now he has a chance to try and turn his life around both on the football field and off it."

Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops was in meetings this morning and did not return a Sun phone call. A spokesman for the University of Oklahoma media relations department would neither confirm nor deny that McGruder had been admitted but added, "There will possibly be a statement later in the day" on the topic.

Sooners Illustrated, a website devoted to Oklahoma sports, reported Wednesday night that McGruder had enrolled at Oklahoma.

The 6-foot-3, 295-pound McGruder, considered one of the nation's top defensive line prospects in the class of 2000, originally was going to transfer to UNLV to play his final three years starting in 2002. But Rebel head coach John Robinson said he wouldn't put McGruder on scholarship or even allow him to walk on until he had felony drug charges cleared up in Knoxville, Tenn.

McGruder was arrested on June 8 and kicked off the Tennessee football after seven bags of marijuana, seeds and a postal scale were confiscated from his smoky Knoxville dorm room after school officials were summoned to check out a potential fire.

His case will be presented to a grand jury in Knox County, Tenn., which will decide if McGruder will stand trial.

"He's got some issues," Robinson said last week. "If all his issues are cleared up, then we'll have him on the team. But he's got to get that cleared up first."

Robinson was in meetings today as UNLV prepared to play Arkansas in Little Rock late this afternoon and could not be reached for additional comment.

Oklahoma, which defeated Florida State in the Orange Bowl in January to claim the national title, was one of the schools McGruder had visited while in high school. He also visited Texas and UNLV before signing with Tennessee.

"Unfortunately things didn't quite work out for him at UNLV," Cooper said. "They said they had a policy not to take a player who had a felony charge pending against him. I guess with the basketball program being in trouble (with NCAA probation) and the football program off to such a good start, they didn't want to have any bad publicity.

"If UNLV had said OK, he'd have been there," Cooper said. "We were just waiting for the final OK to fly him in. I would have loved to have Lynn playing at my alma mater but it just didn't work out."