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Steven M. Sipple: Phillips' story reflects life's complexities

My dad says it often: Life is messy.

Messy and complicated.

That's how I've long regarded the Lawrence Phillips story, right until the end.

Phillips himself was complicated. He was a thinker. A voracious reader. He didn't trust the media. That in itself indicates intelligence.

"The news is laughable," Phillips once wrote in a letter from prison to Paul Koch, a former Nebraska strength and conditioning coach.

"There's no objectivity," Phillips continued, "so I tend to stay away from it."

Phillips enjoyed reading books on philosophy. He recently was immersed in Friedrich Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil.