1-year sentence for angry fan who made threat

COLUMBUS, OHIO » A California man’s threats to harm college football players because they beat his favored team epitomized “fandom spiraled out of control,” something that can’t be ignored in the age of mass shootings, a federal judge said Tuesday as he handed down a sentence of one year and a day over the 2018 threats.

Daniel Rippy, of Livermore, California, a Michigan native and University of Michigan fan, used Facebook Messenger to threaten a shooting at Ohio State University during its annual game against Michigan, and vowed to hurt players on the football team

and then-head coach Urban Meyer, authorities said.

Federal Judge Algenon Marbley had harsh words for Rippy during Tuesday’s sentencing done via video conference because of the coronavirus pandemic. Marbley referenced the mass shootings at Columbine High School in 1999 and Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 as he lectured Rippy on the seriousness of the threats against col

lege athletes just playing a game. “It’s college competition. That’s all it is,” Marbley said.

What Rippy “epitizmies is fandom spiraled out of control,” Marbley said. The judge added: “We have to take this seriously because it happens.”

The 29-year- old Rippy, being held in jail in Columbus, apologized several times, saying he’d been having “a bad day” when he made the threats and promised it would never happen again. As part of an argument for a lesser sentence, Rippy and his lawyer empha

sized that once he’s out of prison, he has a placement at a transitional housing center in California for men recently released from incarceration.

“I really didn’t mean for any of this. I feel really bad about it. I would never, ever do any act like this,” Rippy said.

Prosecutors asked for a 15-month sentence, on the lower end of sentencing guidelines. But in the end Marbley went even lower, noting that, “Some type of psychological or psychic imbalance may have animated this kind of behavior.”