And You Thought Marv Marinovich Was Bad

I don't care if he gives up a TD pass to the Stanford tree, I won't be booing Husky corner Byron Davenport this year; not after reading this P-I story.

Let's pick it up on Super Bowl Sunday of 2004. Davenport, then a high school senior, just told Jeff Tedford he's committed to Cal.

With something along the lines of "We look forward to seeing you in Berkeley," Tedford hung up the phone and got back to watching the halftime festivities of the 2004 Super Bowl -- just in time to see Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction.

About 300 miles south in Long Beach, Calif., Byron Davenport didn't get to enjoy his crowning moment...Instead, Davenport says, he was grabbed, thrown against a wall and choked by his stepfather, the man demanding to know who Davenport thought he was. Davenport wasn't going to Cal, his stepfather said. He was going to UCLA.

Davenport tells the P-I's Molly Yanity that his stepfather, John Velega, beat him and his mother with, among other implements, a can opener. "He was really abusive, just for no reason. He's a crazy dude," Davenport says.

After Davenport reconnected with his real father, he tried to cut ties with Velega, who responded by showing up at UCLA practice and pantomime-shooting at him.

Davenport--known by his stepfather's last name during his tour at UCLA--eventually left the school because, he says, going there had been his stepfather's call.

Now a UW junior, Davenport's probably going to be a starting corner for the Dawgs opposite Roy Lewis.

The P-I's Yanity explains how she came to write the story on her blog.

Earlier this summer, I called Byron Davenport to talk about his progress this summer, to find out when he was coming to Seattle and to talk a little football...but when I asked Davenport about his name change -- he played at UCLA under the name Velega -- he told me it would take a lot longer to tell me than a phone conversation could handle.

So it would seem.