PaulT wrote:
After talkIng with Grosso, it seems that the story told here is not factual. He knew nothing about scalping tickets or prison time. However, he does recognize that he has made some crazy decisions in life.
He was a great one!
I am from Michigan and he was a great one. One guy from our school was extremely talented (like Grosso) in that he didn't train very hard, just what the coaches told him to do, nothing in the summer and nothing on his own during the season and he ran 1:56/4:19/9:29. His best result though was 2nd to Grosso at State Meet (back when State Meets were divided between Team race and Individual race) the year before he won Kinney Championships.
I graduated the same year as Grosso and went on a recruiting trip to MSU, apparently 2 weeks after Grosso had. My name is Brian also and since I was from Michigan several of the Michigan guys were joking about his recruiting visit. Apparently it involved breaking in a ground-level dorm room window, peeping, stealing some jewelry or something. I was really freaked out by this, because we all thought of Grosso as the guy who could run sub-9:00 when Williams could not and we all assumed that he was going to be the next Alberto Salazar. I never found out if they wanted Grosso to even attend ... the XC coach at the time was very straight-laced and serious, and he seemed to know all about what happened. So I don't know if that was a deal-breaker or not. I don't think any of the cold weather schools were in the cards for him anyway.
I have heard about this recruiting visit more times over the years, but I don't know what happened for sure, so don't quote me on it. It seems like 10 years ago, but it is really a long time ago now.