Jabaal Sheard's preliminary hearing isn't until July 28, so until then and perhaps even beyond, it's unlikely we'll have the full story of how Pitt's fine defensive end came to be pummeling, allegedly, another individual on the floor of a South Side art gallery after midnight Sunday.

There are two fairly shocking elements to this story, neither of which is that a college football or basketball player was in a fight early Sunday morning, a common social canker sore of a narrative that occurs at a rate of -- just a guestimate -- 52 Sundays annually.

The shocking elements are these:

• That even though Sheard, according to police, refused to stop punching someone even after throwing said someone through the plate glass door of La Fond Galleries, and that even though Sheard, according to police, refused to stop punching the guy after a cop beat Sheard with a night stick, no one -- apparently -- blew a whistle.

I mean, c'mon. These guys are taught to go until they hear the whistle, officers. Never walk down Carson on a Saturday night without a whistle.

• That even though Sheard, by every account a decent and respectful young man from Florida, hasn't said anything about the events that resulted in his indefinite suspension from Dave Wannstedt's football team, all speculation appears to assume the worst. Someone on squawk radio the other day, after prefacing his analysis by saying it was unfair to speculate, somehow got alcohol, steroids and HGH into the next two sentences. I switched to the Elvis station before it went any further because, that's right, we can't go on together with suspicious minds.

Can't we ever fill this space between the unknown and the known with something other than additional damage? Why not assume the best once in a while? Until July 28 then, here's what I'm thinking went down.

It starts not with a typical round of unchecked boozing, but with a high-minded discussion in a quiet off-Carson bistro. Two young men, one a college student, the other a typical urban bon vivant, are talking about art. At the start, it's an amiable discussion between the defensive end (the DE) and his eventual alleged victim (the EAV).

DE: You ever been over to La Fond Galleries?

EAV: No, but I hear it's intriguing.

DE: Yes, they have a beautiful Patrick Ruane right now, called Sunrise on the Allegheny, and if you like fantasy paintings, there are couple of very good Norman Browns. Check out his Black-Eyed Susans.

EAV: I prefer the Black Eyed Peas.

DE: Oh, you're more the constructivist.

EAV: Classicist really, but I hate the period discussions, don't you? I mean how many times are we going to sit in a bar on the South Side on the weekend arguing Cubism vs. Expressionism? Let's just leave it. Leave it at this: They're a coupla movements that don't like each other.

DE: Doesn't matter the movement. Art is pure emotion expressed, almost primal. Long before language, there was art. Hey, you want to go see some Son House?

EAV: C'mon, man, Son House is dead.

DE: No, not the delta blues legend, Son House the artist.

EAV: That's crazy. Son House is dead.

DE: You callin' me crazy? You wanna say it again?

EAV: Crazy man.

And with that, the defensive end takes the eventual alleged victim by the collar and escorts him harshly around the corner and down Carson to the front of La Fond Galleries, where, for most of last week, the featured artist was, indeed, Son House. Not the delta blues legend, the contemporary painter.

DE: Say you're sorry, or you will now see Son House, even though we are technically outside of gallery hours, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

EAV: Help police!

So, maybe that's when the EAV went backward through the plate-glass door of the art gallery. And maybe as Jabaal continued to pummel the EAV, he looked up and realized, just before the pepper spray, that the joke was on him because Son House was the featured artist only through July 15.

Wednesday they were expecting replacement glass over at La Fond, but I think everyone knows that as long as intelligent young men who are passionate about art meet late at night to exchange ideas and/or knuckles, no glass is 100 percent safe.

Until the 28th then, that's all I'm assuming.

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