Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports
Pitt QB Phil Jurkovec next to emergency room sign outside a hospital
College football has welcomed countless players who briefly managed to make a name for themselves before being largely forgotten by most of the fans who rooted for them once their playing days came to an end. That includes Phil Jurkovec, the QB who started for Pitt and Boston College and has popped back up in the news for allegedly stealing a vehicle from a hospital in Pennsylvania.
Many college football fans (and sports fans in general) are able to derive an inordinate amount of entertainment from the time-honored tradition of Naming Some Guys, a trip down memory lane where you get to tickle your nostalgia bone and flex your knowledge by rattling off the monikers of former players who most people have forgotten about.
It’s the kind of “game” where there’s no real winner or any sort of tangible points system, as the ultimate goal is to sit down with some like-minded people and get hit with a “Damn, nice pull” after invoking a particularly obscure relic of the past.
You’ll also usually end up asking yourself, “What happened to that Guy?” when they come up, and you’ll now get a pretty unexpected answer if you decide to research what one former college quarterback allegedly managed to get into after hanging up his cleats.
Former college QB Phil Jurkovec was arrested in connection to the theft of a box truck from a hospital in Pennsylvania
Phil Jurkovec was a four-star recruit who turned plenty of heads as the quarterback at Pine-Richland High School outside of Pittsburgh before accepting an offer from Notre Dame.
He spent two seasons in South Bend beginning in 2018 and primarily served as a backup before transferring to Boston College in 2020, where he earned the starting job and was initially able to hold his own with the help of the 6’5″ frame that made him a tough tackle for opposing defenses.
Jurkovec headed back to Chestnut Hill in 2021 and seemed poised to have a solid season, but he missed six games after suffering a hand injury against UMass in the second contest of the year. He looked like a shell of his former self when he returned, and he ultimately decided to head back close to home following his third and final ride with the Eagles by transferring to Pitt.
His college career came to a quiet end, as he lost the starting job after the Panthers got off to a 1-5 start and appeared in just one more game after switching to tight end. According to his LinkedIn profile, he briefly interned at a political advertising firm in Pittsburgh before taking a job as an aide in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, although it’s not entirely clear what else he’d been up to since his playing days.
According to CBS News, it appears he’s still living in the Keystone State, which is where the 26-year-old was arrested on Friday, September 18th in connection with the theft of a box truck he was charged with stealing.
Police say an employee at a rental company was loading chairs and tables into the truck in the wake of an event that was held at Wexford Hospital before discovering it had managed to disappear from the garage where it was parked.
The vehicle was equipped with a GPS tracker that led to law enforcement executing a traffic stop in the nearby town of Cranberry. The 26-year-old Jurkovec was the man behind the wheel, and he was arrested and charged wth theft by unlawful taking and receiving stolen property (both felonies).
He did not post bail after his bond was set at $25,000, and he is slated to appear in court for a hearing later this month.