On to the Goal

Perception is reality, but to perceive something, you actually have to observe it. And often in life, we simply choose not to observe. We are content to stroll down our safe, tree-lined streets, blissfully unaware of the fact that somewhere just across town someone is smoking crack or getting robbed at gunpoint. (If you live in Washington D.C., these things are actually occurring in the alley behind your house.) We make our own perception and thus our own reality.

The defending champs return 11 starters on defense and perhaps the greatest college football player ever at quarterback. Life is good for the Florida Gators. Just so long as we don’t think about those instances in which it’s not so good.

As a fan, my initial reaction to Florida being labeled the new “Thug U” for having 23 players arrested in Urban Meyer’s four-year tenure was to recoil in defense. “Other schools have plenty of guys arrested! We’re talking about young males here, things are going to happen! Florida has had perhaps hundreds of players during that time span, and 23 guys are a small fraction of a largely law-abiding team!”

All those things are true. And it’s natural that we reach for them when faced with unwelcome news. We love the Gators and the University of Florida, and we don’t want their good names to be sullied by a handful of lowlifes. But that doesn’t mean we can declare “case closed,” dismiss the article and launch a few insults at Tennessee just for good measure. We should not ignore the issue as if it doesn’t exist.

We might not think so, or at least tell ourselves we don’t, but the media thinks otherwise. A few years ago, The Seattle Times ran an investigative series on the 2000 Washington Huskies – another team with a great defense and a bruising option quarterback. Husky fans were outraged and called the series unfair, and I can’t say I necessarily blame them. But whether the series was “fair” is irrelevant at this point. It happened and the school’s reputation suffered somewhat. It could happen again to Florida.

So with that in mind, it would help to understand what we’re really talking about here. I couldn’t find a comprehensive list of the 23 arrests, so working from memory and a number of message board leads, I set out to document as many of the arrests as I could. A few hours of Googling yielded 14.

I’m probably forgetting some obvious ones, and I couldn’t find links for some stuff that I seem to remember happening. I haven’t named any of those “unconfirmed” cases here, nor did I include anything that happened before or after a player was enrolled. This is a list only of the arrests and/or charges (post-Meyer) that I could substantiate with an actual media report. I’ve sorted them by level of severity as judged by, well, me. All suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty, etc., etc., allegedly. Any instance in which I could confirm the charges were dropped is denoted by an asterisk.

C’mon, it’s college – generally harmless stuff

• John Curits – Probation violation stemming from an alcohol charge.
• Dorian Munroe – Illegally removing a boot from his car. Stupid, yes, but more funny than anything.
• Torrey Davis – Of his many alleged problems, driving with a suspended license wasn’t all that bad.
• Tony Joiner* – The underlying charge sounded serious, but considering the fairly humorous “misunderstanding” defense and subsequent dismissal, no reason to fret.
• Brandon James – Buying weed off an undercover cop. Yes, I’m including this here, because if you smoke weed (which many college kids do) you often have to buy it. James, well, he chose… poorly when it came to dealers.

Boys bein’ boys, not condoning it, not losing our shit over it

• Dustin Doe* – Fightin’. Moving on…
• Jermaine Cunningham – Sub-chuckin’. Abusing service industry employees is not funny if you’ve ever worked in the service industry. Except when it is. But seriously, tip your waiters.

He said, she said and a whole lotta nothing

• Carl Johnson* – Violating a restraining order. Frightening but completely unsubstantiated back-story.

Troubling crimes, but not depraved or wanton

• Marquis Hannah – Felony burglary and misdemeanor assault in what sounded more like a crime of passion than cold, calculated criminality.
• Cam Newton – Stealing a laptop. And not very well.

Really, really terrible things

• Jacques Rickerson – Beating up his girlfriend. Totally unacceptable.
• Jamar Hornsby – Credit card fraud. Of a deceased woman. Who was the girlfriend of a teammate. Later, brass knucles. Giggity.
• Ronnie Wilson – Shootin’ an AK-47 behind Gator City, detailed in terrifying audio.
• Avery Atkins – Beating up his girlfriend led to a sad, tragic spiral that led to his untimely demise.

Of those 14, half are merely things that college-aged males do. None of it is to be condoned, mind you, but it’s inside the realm of mistakes that good, decent people can make before their brain is fully formed. I’m also going to throw out the Johnson matter, because of it’s high bullshit quotient and the fact that there’s no way to ever really know what actually happened. But that still leaves a minimum of six serious crimes, four of which can be accurately described as “totally messed up” offenses. Or worse. That’s an average of one per year. And my tally is missing nine arrests.

For the record, all six players who were accused of serious misconduct are no longer on the team. Most were quickly kicked off and only Newton seemed to have left of his own volition. Yes, Ron “Don’t call me Ronnie” Wilson was back last year, briefly, but is thankfully off the team once more.

In that respect, this is not Switzer’s Oklahoma or Miami circa 1980-something, as Dave Hyde suggested. I certainly don’t think it’s fair to accuse Urban Meyer of “running a loose ship.” Minor transgressions are punished, though admittedly sometimes a bit too lightly. Major issues are met with much more serious consequences, but not necessarily automatic termination. Think of it as “shades of gray” rather than “black and white.” Page two of this Sports Illustrated article by Andy Staples does a fantastic job of explaining Meyer’s philosophy on the matter, particularly his differing approach in dealing with Atkins and Marty Johhnson when he was at Utah. (I agree with many of Staples’ points, by the way, particularly the one about the “one percent of one percent” canard.)

It is fair, however, to point out that every one of those six players was either a Meyer recruit or, in Hannah’s case, a walk-on whose entire run with the team was during Meyer’s tenure. These are his guys. And Hyde is right when he says that the frequency of their heinous behavior runs the risk of damaging Meyer’s reputation and, worse, that of the team and university. A few bad apples, yes, but averaging one “totally messed up” incident a year is not good for business. Just. Not. Good.

So what’s the impact of all this? In the short term, probably not much. Our rivals will have some fun at our expense, newspaper columnists will moralize and, worst-case-scenario, Outside The Lines will launch an “OMG the horror!” investigative piece that reveals exactly zero new facts. (I don’t see anything in these arrests that the NCAA could latch onto.) But then, barring another gut-wrenching incident, silence. We’ll get back to talking about the things we like about football, entertainment, socializing and the ability to release all your pent up emotion by screaming “WOOOO” over and over again at high decibel levels.

The rest will fade into the background until the next backup lineman forgets how to hold his Natty Light. Pray it isn’t something worse.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 12:33 pm and is filed under Cruel reality, I'm super-suhrious, Miscellanious ruminations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.