Peterson: Ex-Cyclone Irving wonders what could have been

I'm not judging whether former Iowa State football player David Irving has been tagged unfairly with the legacy of holding a stop sign that someone handed him during the 2014 Veishea riot.

I wasn't there. Irving wishes he hadn't been.

"If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have been there," he told me last week.

The fact that he was, though, cost him his final year of college football. It maybe cost him some bucks in the NFL Draft that continues Friday and Saturday.

In this age of NFL social awareness, will anyone take a PR risk on a guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time during the last Veishea? Which teams would draft a guy who was charged with alleged domestic abuse against his girlfriend/mother of their child — even despite the charges being dropped?

"It'll be a red flag, of course," said Derrick Fox, Irving's San Diego-based agent. "What's gone on in the league over the last period of time? Sure it will hurt."

This isn't Greg Hardy and Ray Rice. This is David Irving, a very talented defensive tackle who came to the Cyclones from San Jacinto (Calif.) High School in 2011. He was labeled a star of the future. Coach Paul Rhoads talked about him becoming a first-team all-Big 12 Conference performer during the days leading up to the 2014 spring game.

But then came Veishea. Over-served people. Riot.

Cars were overturned. Stuff was thrown. Someone yanked a stop sign from the ground.

"I was walking around," Irving said. "Somebody passed it to me. I had it for three or four seconds, and then passed it on."

Someone snapped a picture. Someone uploaded it to Twitter. The person holding it stuck out like a 6-foot-7, 275-pound strong man.

Yes, it was David Irving.

He was among those arrested — and later he was kicked off the football team. That incident, as well as the domestic assault charge (that was thrown out), was enough.

"After I got out of jail, two or three days later, I got a call from coach Rhoads, saying I was off the team," Irving said.

During a press conference after the 2014 spring game, Rhoads told us:

"David Irving has exhausted that privilege to represent this football program by not meeting the expectations that we laid out for him. David Irving has been dismissed from our football team."

Rhoads added "there are times a player needs, (and) deserves a second chance. There are extreme times even when they may need a third opportunity."

Maybe David had multiple opportunities. Maybe he was given chances — I don't know. That kind of internal stuff usually stays within the confines of the football offices.

But he was off the team, so instead of playing football last season, Irving watched. He worked out. He hung with his girlfriend and their little Zoe, age 2.

"Good exercise for me, trying to catch her," Irving said. "She likes to run around."

Just like Daddy used to.

David worked out. He worked for a while at a San Diego warehouse. He followed Iowa State as best he could.

"The more I watched, the angrier I got," he said. "I should have been there. Starting. It motivated me to start working out even harder."

To this day, he regrets his decision to follow the riotous crowd.

"If I would have just went home," said Irving, who initially was attending a party that spilled onto the street. "Nothing would have happened to me if I'd have just gone home."

He would have played his senior season, possibly playing very well for a team he watched go 2-10. The only question would have been in what round would he be drafted, not if.

"With his testing numbers, his size, and being 21 years old — every NFL team can project an upside," Fox said. "It's just a matter of justifying the pick.

"He made a mistake. He's not made excuses. He's looked people in the eye and said that he made a poor choice."

Now what? All mock drafts peg him for a late round or free agency.

"Red flags are being looked into even more than in the past, but at the end of the day, talent speaks pretty loudly," said Paul Burmeister, host of a daily NFL talk show on the NBC Sports Network. "If teams look into his situation, gain a comfort level that it was a mistake and not representative of what he is as a person — they have a guy with potential."

If not?

Then David Irving will realize that he should have just gone home on that crazy Veishea night.