The game has long been over for former New York Giant Mark Ingram, but the penalty flags keep flying.
The troubled ex-wide receiver, who helped Big Blue triumph in the 1991 Super Bowl, was sentenced yesterday to an extra 27 months behind bars for jumping bail in order to watch his Heisman Trophy-winning son play in a 2009 game.
Ingram, 44, failed to surrender in December 2008 to begin serving a 92-month sentence for money laundering and bank fraud. His rap sheet, which quickly lengthened after his exit from football in 1996, ranges from handling drug money to stealing purses.
Authorities caught up with the desperate father in front of a Michigan motel-room television set on Jan. 2, 2009, as he prepared to watch his son play in the Sugar Bowl.
Ingram had unsuccessfully lobbied authorities to extend his surrender date so that he could watch Mark Ingram Jr. — who has since exploded into a grid superstar for the University of Alabama — for one last time before the prison door slammed.
“I acknowledge what I did was absolutely wrong,” Ingram told Judge Thomas Platt before yesterday’s sentencing inside a Central Islip federal courtroom.
Dressed in green prison garb, the still-muscular Ingram said he didn’t expect any special treatment because of his past glories.
“That is not the situation with me,” he said. “What I did was wrong.”
While Ingram’s lawyer lobbied for an additional sentence of 12 months, federal prosecutors held that his lengthy criminal past and blatant failure to surrender called for the harsher term of 27 months.
Platt agreed, telling Ingram that he understood his desire to see his son play but blasted his disregard for court directives.
“I do this with a heavy heart,” he told Ingram. “You and your family have contributed a great deal to sports. It tears my heart out that it’s ending up this way.”
Mark Ingram Jr., who burst into national prominence after winning the Heisman Trophy last December, was not present in the courtroom.
Ingram Sr.’s lawyer, James Neville, said his client purposefully told his son to keep a distance from his legal troubles. “His father did not want his son involved in this and tainted by it,” he said.
The younger Ingram had no comment on yesterday’s sentencing through a university spokesman.
But he paid his beleaguered dad homage during an emotional Heisman acceptance speech.
“My father has been a great influence on my life,” he said tearfully. “And I love him to death.”