CBS/SI Investigation of Crime & College Football Finds Husker Program Better Than Others - But Nothing to Be Proud Of

by Husker Mike on Mar 2, 2011 10:56 PM CST in College Football - National

CBS News and Sports Illustrated have combined their resources to perform an expose on college football players with legal problems. They focused on last season's preseason Top 25, and found that Nebraska ranked in a tie for 19th place in terms of players with a police record with four. That's actually on the low end. Leading the list are the Pitt Panthers with 22 players having had some sort of police issues. Iowa tied with Arkansas for second with 18. Boise State and Penn State tied for fourth with 16.

Working off a quick Google search and my own recollection, I believe Nebraska's claim to infamy on this list is primarily DUI offenses by Niles Paul, Rickey Thenarse, and Baker Steinkuhler. The fourth may be Ben Cotton's minor-in-possession charge (later dropped) from 2009. Not to excuse those offenses, but Nebraska's record actually looks good in comparison. I do believe that Bo Pelini takes these issues seriously and has improved Nebraska's off-the-field record during his tenure. Not resolved the problem, obviously, but the number and seriousness of incidents has decreased as of late.

The team report was led by SI's Jeff Benedict, Andy Staples, and Armen Keteyian of CBS News. You may remember Keteyian, who has bounced from sideline reporter for NFL games to "Chief Investigative Reporter" for CBS News, as the author of "Big Red Confidential", an attempt to portray Tom Osborne as operating a shady program back in the 80's. The story never went anywhere, especially once Osborne discredited Keteyian's investigation.

I couldn't help but be amused by the name of the school that led the list, and the man who's been in charge of that athletic department for the last three-plus years. (Heck, they had to fire their new head coach after only two weeks after he had been charged with assault himself.) Nebraska's "Enemy of the State" told reporters today that the situation was "unacceptable" and he'll "get this fixed."

"Certainly, this was an unusual year because we had so many high-profile incidents in such a short period of time."

Of course, he's referring to four incidents from last season...ignoring the other eighteen that the investigation reported on. And considering his track record on "getting things fixed", Pitt fans should be very confident in his ability to do just that. (Is your sarcasm alarm going off the charts?)

Our neighbors to the east and newest rivals, the Iowa Hawkeyes certainly have had their share of issues as of late. A quick search of Black Heart, Gold Pants finds 159 hits for "arrest", though many deal with other Hawkeye teams. (A comparable CornNation search only returns 42, most of which actually discuss the legal issues of our opponents.)

More from this investigation is likely to emerge in the coming days, including a call for schools to perform background checks on potential recruits. One problem with that approach is that in many cases, records for these players prior to college are locked up and confidential in juvenile court. Also, in many cases, a college football program can give players a final opportunity to straighten their life out and become a better citizen. Certainly that was the argument that Tom Osborne used when he suspended Lawrence Phillips for half of the 1995 season rather than kicking him off the team. Phillips didn't learn his lesson, and continued to run afoul of the law, cutting his professional career short and now facing spending many, many years in prison.

The question I pose is this: should football programs perform background checks on incoming players and revoke scholarship offers if they have a record? Do football programs need to be held accountable for the legal issues that players find themselves in? Or is this one of those things that will make noise for a few days, then disappear as everybody focuses back on spring football and whether the NFL is going to play this fall?

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Phillips

Was/is a hard core criminal. The only mistake Tom Osborne made was thinking he could change Phillip’s mindset. Didn’t happen.

by cowboy_in_the_wind on Mar 2, 2011 11:12 PM CST via mobile reply actions

Hindsight is always 20/20

I disagreed with Osborne at the time he reinstated Phillips, but I never questioned why he did it.

by Husker Mike on Mar 2, 2011 11:23 PM CST up reply actions

Phillips Was The Living Embodiment.....

…of the classic line from Cool Hand Luke:

“What we have here is a failure to communicate; some men you just can’t reach.”

No matter how sincere Coach Osborne was in his efforts, he wasn’t going to reach L.P.

"This is gonna cause more confusion than a mouse at a burlesque show." --Foghorn Leghorn

by Section 37 on Mar 2, 2011 11:29 PM CST up reply actions 2 recs

I rec this

Just because of the Cool Hand Luke reference. Probably one of my all time favorite movies.

LTC Kilgore: How you feelin' Jimmy?
Door Gunner: Like a mean motherfucker sir!

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me. -Hunter S. Thompson

by Look_A_Red_Squirrel on Mar 3, 2011 3:39 AM CST up reply actions

I saw this report

on the CBS Evening news tonight, and one stat that leapt out at me was the big disparity in the number of “players with records” between our soon-to-be conference and the Big XII. According to the report, the B1G had 50, (and were ranked first) and the Big XII had 16, (and were ranked last).

Who would have thought that our move to academic “nirvana” would also include being number one on the police blotters?!!!

I think, though, that this whole story doesn’t have the legs to carry it much further. They reported that 7% of the players on SI’s preseason Top 25 football teams had some sort of run-in with the law. If it includes a lot of alcohol offenses (which I’m not condoning), well, unfortunately kids sometimes don’t use common sense. No excuse, just a fact. It would be interesting to see how that 7% compares to the general student population, or to other college sports.

One item in the report about killed me though. Even though Nebraska was included in the 11 schools with the fewest “run-ins with the law” with four, Texas had only two. Do they have to win at everything in football…or do I smell booster-related-money-police-connections? (Can’t let go of the conspiracy thing!)

By the way, TCU had ZERO players with records. They are one of only two schools who do criminal background checks.

They're 18 to 22...how perfect were you at that age?
The Power of Red begins with the Passion of Walk-Ons.

by redvalley on Mar 3, 2011 1:47 AM CST reply actions

I believe that this investigation ...

… excluded “open container” citations from their list. Whether that excluded “minor in possession” citations isn’t clear, however. I doubt it…

by Husker Mike on Mar 3, 2011 6:46 AM CST up reply actions

Yeah

EDSBS and Slow States talked about the comparison to the general population. Turns out the football players’ rate is higher, but not by much.

And regarding Texas: On the player level, they tend to run a pretty clean program, especially since they pretty much get to pick any recruit they want in the state of Texas. That means they don’t have to take chances and reach for guys with awesome talent and questionable character, since they can always just sign somebody else who’s a safer bet with awesome talent and good character.

by Cheeseandcorn on Mar 3, 2011 7:20 AM CST up reply actions

Certainly not suprised...

that Nebraska was asked to join The Thug Ten+, even though they only scored a four. After all, it was Nebraska that established this template decades ago with All-American felon and Heisman Trophy winner Johnny “Never Missed a Down” Rogers.

by SallyMan on Mar 4, 2011 12:50 PM CST up reply actions

Iowa's AD officially responds

here. This study is flawed from the beginning. If everywhere had the same laws and police enforcement of those laws then there might be a little more validity to it (but they still would not differentiate between violent and non-violent crimes).

In short, 15 of the 18 arrests were alcohol related; 2 more were drug possession realted (both players no longer with the team as both were dismissed); 1 was an incident where Clayborn punched a cabbie in the face for calling him by a racial slur (you can debate the validity of that all you want, IMHO if you call a big dude a really bad and offensive name you deserved to be punched). This report also doesn’t differentiate between arrests and convictions. There are other serious issues with the data but I’m tired of listing them.

To answer your question, no background checks shouldn’t be performed on recruits. I know if I had a chance to go from squalor to a full ride at a major university, I wouldn’t want a charge of petty theft when I was 15 keep me from doing it.

"I shoot, I score. He shoots, I score." - Dan Gable

by ClaybornSmash on Mar 3, 2011 8:23 AM CST reply actions

Also, the vast majority of the 159 hits of "arrest" on BHGP

are due to the Adam Robinson and DJK arrests from 2 months ago as those were extremely high profile being on the heels of Rhabdogate.

"I shoot, I score. He shoots, I score." - Dan Gable

by ClaybornSmash on Mar 3, 2011 8:25 AM CST reply actions

what amazes

me is that SI/CBS spent six months on this, and this is the best they could come up with. When you look at the names attached to it, there are some pretty decent journalists in there – Andy Staples, for one.

But then you look at the guy who gets the byline – Armen Keteyian – and you understand why. The guy has won a number of awards, but he’s always looking for an angle, some dirt. This time there doesn’t appear to have been the big splash that was expected.

Maybe not. Maybe this is playing out at homes across America as a huge scandal. I doubt it though.

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by Jon Johnston on Mar 3, 2011 9:05 AM CST reply actions

Pretty much everyone seems to agree on that

I think that they went in with the idea of a certain story and did the research only to find that the data didn’t really support their theory, so they intentionally made the article hard to read and the data vague without citing process in order to make sweeping generalizations about all “top” football programs while citing the worst few instances. They had an angle and manipulated the presentation of the data to best fit that angle.

Also, for some reading that might explain the 15 arrests for alcohol do a search on Iowa alcohol arrests. In short, the police started issuing far more tickets than normal the past 2 years to attempt to curb binge drinking and clean up Iowa’s “party school” reputation.

"I shoot, I score. He shoots, I score." - Dan Gable

by ClaybornSmash on Mar 3, 2011 9:33 AM CST up reply actions