America at Large: Criminality runs deep in college sports

Shortly after 10 last Friday night, an Indiana state trooper stopped a car with a broken tail-light that was doing 73 in a 60mph zone. Five Notre Dame gridiron behemoths were shoehorned inside a 2007 Ford Focus that smelled of marijuana. A sniffer dog verified the officer’s initial hunch and a subsequent search culminated in the quintet all facing charges of possession. Ordinarily, a group of 18- and 19-year-olds smoking weed of an evening in America’s mid-west shouldn’t be that big a deal in a country where half the states now offer some sort of legalised access to the drug.

However, the police also discovered an unlicensed hand gun inside the car and the fact three of the players have been charged with offences related to the firearm poses far more pertinent questions. Why would five supersized young men likely to dwarf just anybody they encounter need to be tooled up in the first place? What kind of bother were student-athletes at one of the nation’s most prestigious academic institutions expecting that they thought to bring along a loaded pistol?

A few hours after that troubling incident, Devin Butler, a Notre Dame corner back, got into a fight in a bar appropriately called The Linebacker Lounge. The fracas ended with him being taken away by the cops, charged with shoving a woman, resisting arrest, and battery of an officer who he tackled, slammed to the ground and punched. En route to the police station, Butler apologised and explained he was just “emotional and intoxicated”.

The start of the college football season next Thursday night is one of the most eagerly anticipated dates on the sports calendar. With all the attendant pageantry, fanfare and fight songs, passionate allegiance to an alma mater or local university is the American equivalent of supporting a county team, replete with (supposed) amateurs playing solely for the pride of the institution and their fellow students going demented up in the stands.

Reeking of history, Notre Dame has always been key to the selling of that particular narrative and this explains why six of their stars ending up in cuffs in one night was such a big deal. The Fighting Irish used to style themselves a cut above schools where arrests and perp walks were as common as excessive touchdown celebrations. Not anymore. The virus of criminality now runs deep through every aspect of the college game.

Even before the Notre Dame debacle, August had seen a litany of cases, from the disturbing to the ridiculous, involving those expected to star on the field over the coming months.

A Texas A&M linebacker was charged with domestic assault, a Missouri running back was taken into custody for stealing and for fraudulent use of a credit card, while a South Carolina punter was caught doing malicious damage to a tree.

Immune

Bonkers as that last incident sounds, there are genuinely serious issues here. A Baylor offensive lineman stands accused of stalking an ex-girlfriend who also alleges that he physically abused her. He is the fourth player from that team to be arrested for violent offences against women in the past four seasons. If that statistic would seem to indicate an endemic problem on that particular campus, the reality is that no college is immune to this.

According to arrestnation.com, more than 1,300 college footballers have been arrested since 2010. That these numbers are tallied tells us everything about the extent of the epidemic. Along with announcing the pre-season rankings of teams, a couple of websites also publish helpful tables chronicling which contenders have had most players arrested in the build-up to each new campaign. As sick a commentary on the state of the sport as any.

At least part of the problem is that in a country where star athletes are inculcated with a sense of entitlement from the moment they first show promise, some grow up believing the laws do not apply to them. They aren’t dissuaded of this notion either by the way in which many in positions of power are willing to dispense justice in a rather subjective manner if it helps the cause of the team.

For instance, Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly has dismissed one of the players found in the marijuana car, merely suspended the man who assaulted a cop (surely a more serious offence) , and taken what he terms as "disciplinary measures internal to the football team" (assumed to be a slap on the wrist) against the remaining four.

Stolen gun

Then there’s Alabama, the university fancied to win it all this season. Back in May, two of their players, one of them star left tackle Cam Robinson, were arrested sitting in a car in a closed public park smoking marijuana. Much like their counterparts in Notre Dame, that misdemeanour was compounded by the fact they also had a stolen gun in their possession. Originally hit with weapons and drugs charges, their case was dismissed before ever reaching court.

"I want to emphasise once again that the main reason I'm doing this is that I refuse to ruin the lives of two young men who have spent their adolescence and teenage years working and sweating, while we were all in the air conditioning," said district attorney Jerry L Jones.

The sort of equivocation that demonstrates exactly why college football is a strange subculture all of its very own.