Thought all you KU fan/alumni types would want to see this:

Football Player Is Dogged By a Drive-Through Flap By JENNIFER ORDONEZ Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

LAWRENCE, Kan. -- It never occurred to Dion Rayford that a momentary act of foolishness could link a man so inextricably to the Chalupa.

And certainly, Mr. Rayford never sought any association with a deep-fried, meat-and-cheese-stuffed pillow of flat bread. A 25-year-old Californian, Mr. Rayford came to this college town on a football scholarship. He excelled, becoming a starting defensive end for the University of Kansas. Some scouts thought he stood a chance of playing professionally.

But his on-field exploits never gained a fraction of the attention he got from a November-night visit to Taco Bell. Exactly what happened in the drive-through lane at 2 a.m. on Nov. 17 is a matter of legal dispute. Just Thursday, a state court judge set March 6 for Mr. Rayford's trial on three misdemeanor charges arising from the Taco Bell incident. Mr. Rayford has pleaded innocent.

Taco the Town

This much is clear: No legal verdict could be harder on his image than was the publicity surrounding his arrest. Readers and viewers around the world heard about how Mr. Rayford, enraged to find a Chalupa missing from his takeout bag, climbed through the drive-up window in pursuit of it -- and got hopelessly stuck. In the public mind, Mr. Rayford was suddenly defined by an alleged obsession with a fast-food product. "He's always going to have to face Chalupa jokes," says Kansas defensive coordinator Ardell Wiegandt, one of Mr. Rayford's coaches.

Indeed, the public attention Mr. Rayford receives no longer focuses on his size (6 feet 4, 260 pounds) and football prowess. "People say, like, 'That's the Chalupa guy,' " laments Mr. Rayford.

The notoriety could also sidetrack his career. His coaches, who after the arrest prohibited Mr. Rayford from suiting up for the final game of his college career, wonder whether his gridiron banishment will ever end. At a time when two National Football League players face murder charges, will any professional team take a chance on a man allegedly prone to drive-through-window incursions? At a minimum, "it's a red flag," says Kansas Head Coach Terry Allen. And in the worst-case scenario, he says, the professional-football draft "is such a competitive arena that some coach could say, 'Let's take this other guy because [Dion] is the Chalupa man.' "

Does Mr. Rayford deserve this? He admits he misbehaved that night. Convinced he had been given the wrong order, he concedes that he became verbally abusive, and that a certain amount of alcohol was fueling his anger. On a scale of one to 10-10 being the drunkest he has ever been -- "I was a four at the most," he says.

But an investigation suggests that in one respect, Mr. Rayford was wronged. His career wouldn't be threatened, nor his name a laughingstock, if the Taco Bell incident had remained a local story. And what propelled it beyond the boundaries of Kansas onto sports channels, talk shows and newspapers as far away as Australia may have been a false detail: Even Taco Bell eyewitnesses now say Mr. Rayford never climbed through the drive-up window and never got stuck in it.

Mr. Rayford himself deserves some blame. After his arrest, he wouldn't talk to the sports writers who called him from around the world, thus allowing the twisted tale to spread unchallenged. Mr. Rayford holed up in his house, his address unlisted. Eight weeks later, a reporter's knock on his door prompted a panicked response: "How'd you find me?"

Persuaded to talk about what his friends call the Chalupa Crisis, he explains that, on a previous trip through the Taco Bell drive-up lane, he had received the wrong order. He hadn't caught the error until he was home. A seed of resentment existed, he says, even before he visited Taco Bell on Nov. 17 in his 1998 Ford Explorer, with his friend Dion Johnson in the front seat beside him.

Mr. Rayford recites his version of what happened next with the gravity of a man condemned. He says he didn't even order a Chalupa. His friend Mr. Johnson did, Mr. Rayford says. (Mr. Johnson declined to comment for this article.)

Mr. Rayford says he ordered the No. 3 -- three Taco Supremes and a large soda. After pulling away from the pick-up window, Mr. Rayford says he and Mr. Johnson discovered two mistakes: The tacos, which Mr. Rayford had requested in soft shells, came in hard ones. And Mr. Johnson's Chalupa was missing. Furious, Mr. Rayford got out of his car and walked back to the drive-through window.

The window in question measures 14 inches by 46 inches. Mr. Rayford, by all accounts, stuck his head through the window and started bellowing. A sales clerk took his bag of food and, when Mr. Rayford retracted his head, closed the window but for a few inches. Mr. Rayford pried it open, breaking a motion sensor that regulates the opening and shutting of the window. He inserted his head and shoulders and demanded a Chalupa with such force, employees say, that they locked themselves into an office and called 911.

When police arrived, Mr. Rayford was still leaning in the window, alternately screaming and begging for his food. As Mr. Rayford tells it, a police officer grabbed his arm and pulled him back. Checking his Explorer, officers found an open container of hard liquor and made the bust, charging Mr. Rayford with assault for threatening the employees, destruction of the electronic system on the window and having in his car an open container of alcohol. The maximum penalty for the most serious of the three charges -- criminal damage to property -- would be six months in prison and a $1,000 fine.

Of course, whether Mr. Rayford was stuck in the window has no bearing on his innocence or guilt. Police initially said he was indeed stuck. But nowhere in the publicly released police report is there mention of that. He says he wasn't. What's more, his biggest critic in this entire fiasco, Tiffany Swan Holloway, manager of the Taco Bell that night, agrees that throughout the ordeal, he was neither jammed nor immobile. With the window standing less than 4 feet high, he had to stoop to lean into it. His feet never left the ground.

Asked about the evidence now, police spokesman George T. Wheeler declines to describe Mr. Rayford as stuck. "He was not physically stuck in the window, so he could go out, but he couldn't go any further through the window," Sgt. Wheeler clarifies, adding, "I know it would make a better visual if his feet were hanging out of it."

To those officers arriving on the scene, the sight of Mr. Rayford screaming for a Chalupa may have seemed like a case of life imitating a commercial. Taco Bell advertisements have shown a police officer telling a man to "drop the Chalupa," a hugely successful menu item that company literature predating the Rayford affair suggests "fuels hedonistic impulses."

And whether police saw any humor in the situation or not, the media certainly did. At a daily news conference that morning, police disclosed the incident -- including Mr. Rayford's supposed stuckness. By the time Mr. Rayford arrived home hours later, he was international news.

ABC's "World News Now," NBC's "The Tonight Show" and CBS's "Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn" all made sport of Mr. Rayford. "Fox Sports News" anchor Keith Olbermann named Mr. Rayford the Top Criminal Athlete, ahead of the likes of Mike Tyson. "The man weighed 270 pounds, the window collapsed underneath him and he was stuck there until police could get him out ... . He was stuck there for several hours," Mr. Olbermann reported, erroneously.

Almost every major daily in the U.S. carried the item. "Hanging half way," reported the New York Times. "Became stuck," said the Canberra Times in Australia. "Dion got wedged in," reported the Washington Post's Tony Kornheiser, who shortly after the incident named Mr. Rayford his Athlete of the Year.

Will it ever end? Mr. Rayford believes so. "Only some of my close friends will talk about it 10 years from now," he says.

Meanwhile, he awaits his trial, and copes with a temporary restraining order against revisiting the scene of the alleged crime. He legally can -- and has -- visited other Taco Bells, but not to order a Chalupa.

The man most closely linked to the Chalupa insists he has never tried one.

-- Swampfox (wmikell@earthlink.net), February 04, 2000