LAST WEEK, a member of our football team appeared in court for charges of breaking and entering and grand larceny. This is merely the latest in a string of off-the-field problems surrounding the University’s most public team. Within the last few years, there have been a startling number of players dismissed for their extracurricular behavior. This behavior embarrasses the program and the University, and demands more scrutiny by the athletic department on the character of its athletes in its recruiting process.
In the last year, multiple players have been dismissed from the team for legal problems. In addition to the aforementioned charges to Rashawn Jackson, quarterback Peter Lalich spent much of the semester dealing with charges stemming from underage drinking. Cornerback Mike Brown was dismissed after being charged with several crimes, from grand larceny to intent to sell stolen property. Linebacker J’Courtney Williams also had to leave the team after being charged with credit card theft. Add these three to other players dismissed in the last few years, such as the trio of Ahmad Brooks, Tony Franklin, and Vince Redd in 2006, and the trend begins to appear more alarming. The laundry list of players dismissed for their conduct off-the-field becomes shocking.
This is especially true given that all of these athletes were either contributors or stars on the field. Jackson, Cook, and Franklin were consistent starters. Sewell and Lalich were our last two starting quarterbacks. J’Courtney Williams was a highly touted prospect. Ahmad Brooks was an All-American and potential first-round pick in the NFL draft.
This suggests one of two things. It is possible that the environment surrounding our football team is toxic, that there is a generational influence among the players on the football team with bad apples passing on the same attitude to younger players. If so, then this is something the coach and team leaders must address directly. The other possibility, and one that seems most likely, is that those doing the recruiting for our football team place too high a premium on talent at the expense of ignoring potential character issues in the players they pursue. If this is the case, then it needs to change, because every time a player has a run-in with the law, it is an embarrassment to the football program, the athletic department, and the University.
Athletes can do significant damage to the reputations of their program with their actions off the field. Take, for example, Virginia Tech. One athlete, Marcus Vick, did a great deal to tarnish the success the team attained on the field with his actions off of it. He was accused of activities with an underage girl (in a case that only just reached a settlement), as well as possession of drugs and pulling a gun on teenagers in a parking lot. Vick is an excellent example of coaches looking past character flaws for the sake of talent, and for the embarrassment one player can cause a program.
So what should those doing the recruiting for the University do? Professional football teams sometimes hire private investigators to examine the conduct of potential draft picks before investing their money in them. This would not work on the college level, as there are too many players and teams under evaluation. Nor does it seem quite right to subject an 18-year-old to a full-scale investigation.
One possible solution is to utilize Facebook and Myspace. Information that athletes make public about themselves is a viable method to use for evaluating character. Additionally, recruiters can make more of an effort to glean information from high school administrators and faculty, looking for red flags in the records of athletes. It helps to gather character references from people close to the athlete in question. According to Athletic Director Craig Littlepage, coaches put forth a great deal of effort in getting to know the recruits, their families, and others close to them. After recruits make a formal visit, coaches evalute information given by those who came in contact with the prospective student athletes in order to “make the determination as to whether the prospect is someone that can be successful” at the University. To be fair, it might well be that this process works, and the team has simply gotten unlucky with a few athletes. The track record suggests, however, that recruiters need to pay more attention to red flags and less to the skills of the player.
The motto of the athletic department of our University is “uncompromised excellence.” It seems there have been compromises made in the talent-character tradeoff. If the choice comes down to winning a few more games on Saturday or continuing to read reports of the off-the-field failings of our players, I’ll take legitimate “uncompromised mediocrity” any day of the week.
Robby Colby’s column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at r.colby@cavalierdaily.com.
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