Ex-NFL player’s trashed N.Y. house sold at auction

TROY, N.Y. >> The upstate New York home of former NFL player Brian Holloway was sold at a foreclosure auction Tuesday, nearly two months after it was trashed during a party attended by hundreds of young people and Holloway used some of the partiers’ social media posts to identify them for police.

The 200-acre property in rural Stephentown sold for $400,000 during an auction at the Rensselaer County courthouse not far from Holloway’s longtime summer home in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains, he told The Associated Press.

Holloway said tens of thousands of dollars in damage was done to the home during a Labor Day weekend party attended by up to 400 people, many of them high school students, who broke into the main house and a guest house. Word of the Aug. 31 party was spread via Twitter and other social media, and many partygoers posted photos of themselves online drinking inside Holloway’s home. Holloway later reposted many of those images and tweets on a webpage he created, drawing criticism from parents who threatened to sue him.

Police have charged eight people, including a 19-year-old man Holloway said he had taken into his family a few years ago.

The only bidder at the auction was Berkshire Bank, which bought the lien on the house. Local media has reported that Holloway owed more than $1 million to the bank.

Holloway had been seeking to sell the property for $1 million. He said he’s working with investors he didn’t identify on plans to reacquire the property but didn’t go into detail.

“This is like being in the third quarter and you’re down by three touchdowns,” he said as he headed back to his home in Lutz, Fla., after the auction. “The game’s not over.”

Holloway bought the property near the Massachusetts border more than 30 years ago, when he was playing offensive tackle for the New England Patriots. He ended his career with the then-Los Angeles Raiders.