1 » Jeremy Fowler of the Orlando Sentinel put together an excellent investigative piece on traffic citations and arrests accrued by the Florida Gators football team from 2006-09. In total, 251 citations were handed out including 21 misdemeanors/felonies. Twelve different Gators have acquired seven or more tickets with senior defensive end Jermaine Cunningham leading the pack with 14. “The number of tickets per college student is not an exact science,” Fowler contends, “but research indicates UF football players get pulled over at least twice the average amount for college-aged males in the country.” Florida players average 2.61 tickets each over their career while a normal student is given less than one, according to the University Police Department.
2 » Four-star wide receiver recruit Chris Dunkley (Pahokee, FL) has announced plans to make his college commitment official on Jan. 9 at the Under Armour All-American Game. Considered a heavy Florida lean, Dunkley recently cast some doubt on that assumption by saying that the Alabama Crimson Tide remain a contender for his services. Dunkley is believed to be the Gators’ No. 1 offensive recruiting target.
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The Orlando Slantinel has developed quite a reputation for digging up stuff on UF. Anything to sell newspapers nowadays.
They’re just doing their job.
No wonder why we Orlando locals call that fishwrap the “Slantinel”………..
Cops = racial profiling which doesn’t bode well for a primarily African American team.
Adam you are doing your job, sportswriters are doing what they can to keep their jobs. You do an amzing job keeping people accurately informed and letting us figure out the rest. some people love to find whatever negative stuff they can just so they can keep their check.
Newsbreak, Gainesville PD Chief and Orlando Sentinel Editor in Chief both went to Bama during their undergrad education.
Thank you. My point is that the motivation of the Orlando Sentinel and the writer (Jeremy Fowler) is not to paint the Gators in a negative light. Disciplinary and legal issues are a big story surrounding the team and all of the information acquired for the story is seemingly public record. It is a legitimate investigative piece.
Granted, the story is not groundbreaking as traffic citations and tickets are pretty much meaningless (I can promise I got more than one on campus when I attended the University of Florida), but it does speak to a bigger issue at hand. Fact is, because they are on scooters and many do not even realize they need operating licenses, players are at a greater risk of getting tickets and, more importantly, having them pile up by not paying them (which leads to misdemeanors).
The administration needs to be more proactive rather than reactionary and fix the bigger situation (arrests) that way little stories like this are not even considered for investigation.
Mr2Bits – It’s not racial profiling – it’s student profiling. UF students are targeted by cops. UF students with recognizable faces (who may have previous tickets/citations) are even more likely to be pulled over a second time as the cops realize it is not a singular occurrence. I am not defending the cops, but I am disagreeing with the racial profiling comment.
Orange Hulk – So? It’s a conspiracy?
Adam…common. You see a candy apple impala if your a cop and your going to trail it until it does something wrong so you can search the entire car because the cop saw something or smelled something. The cop will say you rolled a stop sign, or you were swerving or whatever the hell they want to pin on you.
My undergrad life had me lined up for law school, that coupled with many cop friends lets call a spade a spade. Racial factors or student, its still profiling especially when it’s the combination of both.
I think that “candy apple red Impala” comment is more racial than at least anything implied in the article. BTW I would bet most of those tickets were on campus on scooters
First thing I thought of as all I could remember was ESPN making such a big deal about Darren McFadden’s Candy Apple Red Impala
Campus cops are the worst. Most of them are wanna-bes.