What Do School Presidents Think About Criminals On Their Teams
July 31st, 2009 02:28 PM║ Posted By: John Pennington ║ Permalink ║ Tags: Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
Jamar Hornsby, a player who had already been dismissed from Florida’s football team, was arrested in March for aggravated assault and petit larceny. Brass knuckles — while it’s now believed they weren’t used in the beating — were apparently in his possession. A federal indictment on the assault charge has now been handed down.
Houston Nutt, however, has said simply that Hornsby’s future at Ole Miss is in the hands of the court system.
Ben Axon, a South Carolina signee, was arrested in May when police found him in a car filled with 23 small bags of marijuana. Realizing that he was either an anal retentive dope fiend or a dealer, prosecutors charged him with possession of marijuana with intent to sell. He has now entered pre-trial intervention — which could get him off the legal hook.
Steve Spurrier has said Axon’s future with the Gamecocks is in the hands of the USC administration.
The beat goes on.
Florida has defended itself all summer against columnists who’ve taken Urban Meyer to task for overseeing 24 arrests of his players in a four-year span. (A number that’s now risen to 25.)
Tennessee got national exposure (brought up again at SEC Media Days) when Lane Kiffin awarded a scholarship to Daniel Hood, who — when he was 13, five years ago — was found guilty of taking part in the rape of his cousin.
At least Hood’s case transpired five years ago. As horrific as any rape charge is, the time between the event and UT’s scholarship offer has allowed Vol officials to claim that the young man has turned his life around. (Indeed, a number of people, including the victim of the rape, wrote letters of recommendation for Hood.)
Still, Tennessee has received a lot of negative press over the matter. Ditto Florida, South Carolina and Ole Miss for their players’ conduct.
And those actions are much more recent.
I’m far from a hanging judge. I’ve been the beneficiary of second chances in my life and I believe athletes deserve second and third chances just as much as anyone else.
But that doesn’t mean they deserve second chances on the football field. Life isn’t football.
A second chance doesn’t necessarily mean a young man — who had 23 bags of marijuana to sell just months before heading to Columbia — deserves to represent the University of South Carolina as a student-athlete.
(Due to the nature of his crime, it should be noted that the Columbia I speak of is the one in South Carolina, not the one in South America.)
And in Hornsby’s case, how many chances will this man be given to play football? He was arrested and charged with aggravated assault and petit larceny. Not even his own attorney has tried to pass the case off as some sort of self-defense. It was “just a fight,” in his words.
Should Nutt not immediately have called the young man, talked to him about the case, querried the police on the matter, and then rendered his own decision — “This was your second chance… I’m not going to have someone getting into fights (and carrying brass knuckles) on my team.”
Should Spurrier not have done the same with Axon? “I’m sorry, young man, but we can’t have a pot salesman on the team.” This wasn’t a kid getting high after school. This was a dealer.
And while I don’t think that’s cause for the death penalty, I do think it should be enough of a black eye to warrant a revocation of a football scholarship.
I’m left to wonder what the presidents at Florida, Ole Miss, South Carolina and Tennessee think about the bad press their schools have received.
Are my suspicions correct that these school officials are simply thinking, “This kid can really help our football team?” I hope that isn’t the case. But it sure looks that way.
A coach? Well, I can understand a coach doing whatever is necessary to build a winner.
But at some point there needs to be someone above the coach who says, “I don’t think this is the kind of representative we need for our university.”
So help the young man who gets in serious trouble to find a job. Help him get into a junior college. Help him get counseling.
Those are second chances as well. They’re darn good ones.
And those don’t send the message to America’s sports fans that “we’ll stand by anyone for anything if he can help us win.”
The nation of Colombia in S. America is spelled differently than the capital of S. Carolina, Columbia.
Houston played this one according to the spirit of the law. Remember that pesky little James Madison fellow who, after laboring all night to write the perfect form of government, slapped his forehead when he suddenly realized he had left out a paragraph or two about the people's rights.
We are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Yeah, many folks might convict us in their minds before the fact. And some accusations are so heinous as to render the accused an unredeemable social pariah, even if found not guilty years later in an unpublicized trial. But I digress.
It is one thing to give a scholarship to convicted players, the promise of redemption notwithstanding. And I applaud the Christian zeal/humanitarian desire to provide an opportunity for a second chance to turn a kid's life around. But that's another issue.
In the particular instance of Houston Nutt finally telling the player he is off the team because he has been convicted of a spefic charge, Coach Nutt acted correctly. To kick a kid off the team just because he has been arrested is outside the intent of the spirit of our Bill of Rights.
Now, the way some authorities handle such situations is to suspend a player until after the trial, depending on the severity or nature of the crime. The idea being that some crimes are so serious that just the possibility of guilt is so dangerous/repugnant that team morale, or even the safety of the players, must take precedence over the individual's right to play. However, the player is not kicked off the team until after the trial.
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