Travis Bryan received a call Saturday from Jay Pfeifer and Brian Nee, who congratulated Bryan on earning Syracuse’s scholar-athlete of the week award.

One problem: Bryan is neither a scholar nor an athlete at Syracuse University.

In fact, he’s lived at home in Houston for the past two months after withdrawing from school and quitting the Syracuse men’s lacrosse team. Bryan left SU at the end of February, a month after he was arrested for driving while intoxicated, a charge that stemmed from an incident during which Bryan crashed his father’s 1999 Chevrolet station wagon into a parked Syracuse Police car.

‘I wonder how they came up with me being scholar-athlete of the week,’ Bryan said. ‘I guess I haven’t (ITALICS) failed (ITALICS) any classes this semester.

‘Someone in the athletic department ain’t doin’ too good of a job.

‘It goes to show that they really don’t know what’s going on with anybody. That’s pretty clueless of them to call me scholar-athlete of the week.’

Bryan’s name was announced in the Carrier Dome at the end of halftime during the Orangemen’s 18-8 win over Albany.

‘They announced the scholar-athlete of the week, and one of the names was Travis Bryan,’ said a reliable source close to the team who spoke on a condition of anonymity. ‘Immediately, hilarity ensued.’

Players started chuckling and shaking their heads, the source said. Pfeifer and Nee would later call their former teammate and inform him of the erroneous honor.

Syracuse head coach John Desko, Director of Athletics Jake Crouthamel and Kerrin Perniciaro, the team’s contact in Syracuse’s athletic communications department, were unaware of the announcement until yesterday afternoon.

‘Oh, that’s embarrassing,’ Perniciaro said when informed of the announcement. ‘Just an oversight on our part.’

Perniciaro said her department selects scholar-athletes of the week from a list compiled at the beginning of every semester. The list includes athletes who have at least a 3.0 grade-point average. Every week, the department selects two athletes from the list.

Last week, Perniciaro’s co-worker, Michelle Kelly, informed Perniciaro that she’d selected Bryan. Perniciaro told Kelly to choose someone else because Bryan had left school. (During his time at SU, Bryan made the athletic director’s honor roll three times and once earned scholar-athlete of the week. Bryan said his grade-point average was about 3.4.)

The athletic department’s marketing department also receives a copy of the scholar-athlete selections, which it gives to public address announcer Carl Eilenberg. Perniciaro said the marketing department never received an e-mail her department sent, asking to scratch Bryan’s name.

The athletic communications department replaced Bryan with men’s lacrosse midfielder Steve Vallone.

‘You certainly wouldn’t expect that mistakes like that would happen – glaring mistakes,’ Crouthamel said. ‘The only thing we can do is pay a little more attention to detail.’

At least one SU lacrosse observer, the source’s father, realized the error earlier last week when he saw the erroneous announcement on the athletic department’s Web site, suathletics.com. Perniciaro said the announcement was never published on the Web site.

The source’s father shared an AOL Instant Messenger conversation with his son, describing the athletic department’s communication problems.

‘He wrote that on IM,’ the source said. ‘I wish I had saved the exchange. It would’ve been hilarious. I would’ve e-mailed it to you.’

Bryan echoed the source’s sentiment about miscommunication in the department. Bryan and the source said most of the issues occurred over the Orangemen’s practice times and locations.

‘It’s fairly unorganized in terms of that,’ Bryan said. ‘It definitely happens where you show up in the Dome and practice isn’t in the Dome. Probably once a week that happened.’

Crouthamel noted that, during the spring, the football team and men’s and women’s lacrosse teams all vie for time in the Dome – an issue that Crouthamel said concerned the athletic department.

‘Football has priority,’ Crouthamel said, adding that teams must shuffle their schedules, which coaches are ultimately responsible for modifying.

As for Bryan, he’s working full time in Houston and plans to take night classes this summer at a local community college. He said he won’t return to Syracuse and that the driving-while-intoxicated charge was dismissed. He added that he has no hard feelings toward the Syracuse men’s lacrosse team.

He withdrew from school for fear of being expelled, which would’ve prevented him from transferring his SU credits to another school. The source close to the team said Bryan had previous SU disciplinary issues hanging over his head and was on probation with SU’s Office of Judicial Affairs.

Bryan’s accident occurred at 2:55 a.m. on Jan. 31. He was driving on Clarendon Street when he hit a patch of ice and slid into a police car that was parked on the 700 block of Ackerman Avenue with its emergency flashers on, according to a police report. Pfeifer was riding in Bryan’s car, according to the report.

Bryan refused to take a Breathalyzer test. He said he was unaware that state law dictates that refusing to do so results in an immediate arrest for driving while intoxicated.

‘Down here at home in Texas, we’re told not to take (a Breathalyzer when we get pulled over),’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I would’ve passed. But it’s pretty easy to fail those things. Four beers and you blow a .08.’

Bryan declined to say how much alcohol he drank that night.

‘Travis kind of handled the whole thing in such a way that he didn’t appear to have fucked up,’ the source said. ‘As far as I know, he handled it in a way that allowed him to save face.’

Little did he know that his accident would leave the athletic department wiping egg off its face.

‘A lot of the shit they do is pretty screwy,’ Bryan said. ‘So it’s kinda good for something like this to happen to keep them in check.’

Published on April 26, 2004 at 12:00 pm