Now that college football training camps have opened around the country, it is time to take a look at that other time-honored tradition: suspensions of college football players.
Since coaches are restricted by the NCAA as to the amount and type of contact they can have with players during the Summer, the opening of Fall camps creates the opportunity to deal with the transgressions of their young student-athletes. As for the incoming freshmen, this is also their first time in the true college life setting, which tends to leads to foibles of various levels. These suspensions have become a rite of passage each year.
NCAA Training Camps are Open. Let the Suspensions Begin
Down in Coral Gables, Miami’s redshirt freshman quarterback Kevin Olsen has been suspended for the Hurricanes’ season opener against Louisville. According to the Miami Herald, Olsen failed a drug test, although the type of drug was not specified. Olsen was also suspended from the team’s bowl game last December for breaking team rules, and had already been cited before even arriving in Miami, for leaving the scene of an accident. This kid is only in his second year with the program. ‘Canes fans better hold their collective breath for the next three years. Since Miami’s projected starter, Ryan Williams is injured, Miami will be down to its third string QB for the opener.
Charlie Strong left Louisville to guide the Texas Longhorns program back to prominence. Some of the players on the current roster would probably prefer less prominence. Strong, making sure the Lone Star state sees the new sheriff in town, has kicked five players off the team and suspended three more. Two of the players that got the boot are being charged with felony sexual assault and face up to 20 years in prison. I’m not sure there is an extended program in the NCAA that would allow them to maintain their playing eligibility that long. Two of the dismissed players were given their walking papers for what Strong called, “violating the core values of the program.” No one other than Strong has any idea what that means, and that’s the way some coaches like it. “Trust me as I get rid of the dead weight and five weeks into the season you will have forgotten about them anyway,” so goes the plan.
UCLA is 15 years removed from it’s last great run. In the late 1990s, Bob Toledo’s squad ran off a 20 game winning streak, but his program was fraught with discipline problems. Once he couldn’t win as much, it made it easier for the administration to show him the door. Enter Karl Dorell, followed by Rick Neuheisel. They both brought more discipline, but not enough wins, including Neuheisel’s ignominious 50-0 loss to crosstown rival USC, which ended his tenure. That brings us to the Jim Mora era, now entering year three. Mora has had a successful first two years by most standards, and pollsters have the Bruins as a Top 10 team this year. But before you think this is a return to the old Bob Toledo era, Mora is quick with the discipline. Three incoming freshmen have been left off the team’s training camp roster and will not return until after the season opener at Virginia. Their crimes? “Those three guys did not live up to the standards that we are looking for through the Summer months,” explained Mora. Most of us have no idea what that means, and Mora is okay with that. By the way, the Bruins are training far away from their posh Westwood campus, utilizing the facilities at Cal State San Bernardino, where the daily temperatures hit triple digits. I am not so sure the suspended three are feeling a big loss there.
If each year brings about the need to dole out punishment, then Georgia coach Mark Richt is the head warden. Richt and his program are a perplexity. By all accounts, he does an generous amount of community service and charitable work. Yet, he is now in his seventh consecutive year of entering Fall camp with at least one player suspended. Despite all of his good social doings, does Richt recruit bad kids for the program? Does his program have a discipline problem? Does he just have less leniency for the transgressors? Your answer probably depends on whether you wear Bulldog Red year round or not. Richt says it is because he demands accountability where other coaches may not. True or not, other coaches win more conference and national titles than he does, so they play by a different set of rules, appropriate or not. Among Richt’s problem children on this year’s roster are players being punished for theft, a DUI, an aggravated assault charge, and a failed marijuana test. That raises a whole other question: if you are a college football player who feels the need to spoke pot, what are you doing in Athens, Georgia? The state is as red as it gets, but has a better chance of electing a liberal for governor than it ever does of legalizing marijuana. Couldn’t you have found a roster spot at the University of Washington or Colorado?
Nick Saban suspended three players as camp opened for the University of Alabama. Two of the players had been arrested during the offseason , one on a DUI charge. Saban said the length of the suspensions are to be determined. The severity of the punishment is also to be determined. How can Saban keep everything on the down low at ‘Bama while Richt faces annual jousting at Georgia? There is already a statue of Saban out front of Bryant Denny Stadium for the two national titles he has won in Tuscaloosa. Those statues buy you, your team, and your misguided players a lot of leeway.
It seems clear that the next three weeks leading up to the season openers cannot go quickly enough for coaches and players alike. Then we can get on with the business of overly critiquing play calling and the product on the field.
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