re: Art Cantrelle

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Can you guys enlighten me on him? When did he play? Why is he known for fighting?

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But today’s players are wild and out of control they say. Wrong college athletes have always been the same just now it’s all on social media.

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TRUE ^.

Indulge me, please, for a little background:

Things were different then. Players could get away with some pretty severe misbehavior.

Stuff that a player would be arrested for, today (and/or kicked off the team, a la Ryan Perrilloux) could be “handled” with few, if any, repercussions.

I have heard it claimed that the media would simply ignore arrests, but this is not quite accurate.

“Back in the day”, as the saying goes -- before the advent of 24-hour interconnectedness, social media and ultra-portable cameras -- it was not necessarily the case that arrests went unreported . . .

. . . it’s that such arrests generally didn’t happen in the first place.

Now, I expect that this may be kinda difficult for some of the “youngsters” to comprehend -- like trying to conceive of a time in human history when there was no such thing as soap -- but please bear with me:

Imagine, if you can, a time when everything -- EVERYTHING -- was analog.

No personal (or portable) computers.

No social media.

No portable phones, cellular or otherwise.

No digital imagery.

The police had no MACE. No TASERS. No body cams.

LEO communication was by car-mounted radio -- portable electronic communication was extremely rare.

A LEO’s armament consisted of some species of “nightstick”, and (nominally) a Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver chambered in .38 Special.

And social conditions were more placid -- a LEO’s mere presence was enough to intimidate nearly anyone into compliance.

LE firearms doctrine was different then, too, and LEOs were -- generally -- little schooled in unarmed combat.


In those primeval days, a miscreant athlete would typically be bundled into the back of a patrol car, while a phone call was made to the head coach (generally from a nearby pay phone). The offender would then be transported to the coach’s home, at 3 AM or thereabouts.

He would have to endure the coach’s wrath until (at least) dawn, and for the remainder of the season, and his days of practice would be a misery -- but if he was a star, he would still play on Saturday nights.

The “investigative” and “activist” journalistic subspecialties were still in their infancy -- the incident could be kept out of the newspapers.

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Cantrell once allegedly took care of business in a hail of fisticuffs at an establishment known as The Keg.
A former patron of the Keg said that Art lifted a pinball machine and hurled it at four deputies who were approaching him with batons and wearing head gear."

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Sorry, but the pinball machine story is apocryphal. Those old “biffer” machines of the time (eventually outlawed as “gambling devices”) weighed about 900 pounds.

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Jesus. This man was a savage.

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Cantrelle was big, strong, fast, and psychotic.

In the Keg incident, he was accosted at the bar, around 3:00 in the afternoon, by two LEOs. He was having none of it.

It took him about twenty seconds to disable them both, and leave them semiconscious on the floor. He then walked to the bar, drained the last quarter of his mug of draft, and walked -- briskly -- out the door.

Now, this was not his “first rodeo” -- the police already knew who he was.

I expect that there was some discreet back-and-forth with elements of the Athletic Department, and accommodations made.

But although there was a room full of witnesses, AFAIK the incident never actually made the news.

Today ?? Cantrelle would "go away" for a very long time.

He was my foosball goalie one night at a frat house after a game. We were playing for $20 a game, and winning about $60 each. The other goalie is a big, drunk coonass from Golden Meadow who starts threatening to kick my arse with his heavy accent. Cantrelle stops,leans over and whispers in my ear to ignore him cause he had my back and tell the dude to shut up. He did. He wasn't suicidal.

Cantrelle told me his older brother used to tie him up and leave him in the swamp overnight to make him tough. He said the mosquitoes would eat him up.