CHOMPING: Florida’s 30 arrests under Meyer

The number is 30. Not 27, not 34 – 30. Thirty arrests of Florida Gators student-athletes under head coach Urban Meyer. Thirty mistakes that he is apparently solely responsible for because, in addition to doing everything in his power to teach these kids the difference between right and wrong in the limited time he has with them, he is in charge of their personal lives, too. Thirty times, you might think, said players first thought about the values that Meyer, his coaching staff and his support staff have been trying to instill in them and consciously made the decision to ignore. Thirty instances in which Meyer is at fault because he’s the figurehead and, much like how a quarterback is the one who gets the praise or blame for a win or loss, the onus falls on his shoulders.

Except it is not all Meyer’s fault. He may be responsible, but the blame needs to be placed where it belongs – on the players.

It’s not like Meyer encourages his players to break the law or does not take the correct steps to help solve the growing problem. If you want to find Meyer guilty of anything, it may be caring too much. Is it wrong that a man responsible for over a hundred young men each year chooses to wait and see how a situation proceeds or is resolved legally before making a final decision on a particular person’s life?

Read the rest of this entry…after the break.

You may see Meyer as a head football coach; that’s not his perspective. He views his job as that of a mentor and educator for young men, someone whose responsibility it is to help turn teenagers into respectable adults. This is what he promises parents when recruiting their children; it is a goal his wife, Shelley Meyer, shares. It is why players are invited into his home, treated like family. It is why so many parents rave about how their children are going to play for Meyer, not just the University of Florida.

And as such a figure, Meyer is not reactionary. He doesn’t kick players off the team or revoke their scholarships because of media pressure or because some columnist sitting in South Florida says it needs to be done to send a message to the rest of the team.

Instead, he attempts to rehabilitate young men, guys like Marty Johnson, so they don’t wind up like Avery Atkins. Meyer understands that you don’t get through to kids by giving up on them, you do so by providing second – and in rare cases third – chances when such opportunities are warranted. And when that chance is given and the trust is broken yet again by another mistake? See ya.

Don’t get it twisted – Meyer is NOT being exonerated here. Thirty arrests is a concerning number. It is downright disgusting for most sports fans and saddening for those close to the program. Something needs to be done – and fast – but Meyer can only do so much.

Remember: It would be just as wrong to over-punish as it would be to under-punish.

Right now, too many are concentrating on the headline rather than the details. No matter what the charges are (found in a link below), these players either broke the law or were on the edge of breaking the law. Rather than take a universal perspective about the situation relying on the number “30,” one should dive deeper into what these players were arrested for, what happened to their cases and how they were punished. Because that is much more difficult than throwing out a nice round number and criticizing it.

Of the 30 arrests under Meyer, two were for misdemeanor underage possession of alcohol (internal punishment of Matt Elam and Solomon Patton) and six others were for misdemeanor violations in which charges were dropped by the state without prosecution.

These include John Curtis violating probation by not finishing his community service in time (internal punishment), Jermaine Cunningham throwing paper cups at Jimmy John’s employee (internal punishment), Riley Cooper not moving out of the way of a police vehicle (no punishment), Carl Johnson accidentally getting on the same bus as someone with a restraining order against him (no punishment), Louis Murphy possessing marijuana (suspended three games), and Janoris Jenkins attempting to stop his necklace from being stolen and non-violent resisting of arrest (internal punishment). Additionally, two felony theft charges – to Tony Joiner for retrieving his girlfriend’s car from an impound when trying to pay but no one being there (stripped captaincy) and Dorian Munroe removing a police boot from his car (internal punishment) – were also dropped.

That leaves 20 serious offenses that Meyer had to deal with, 15 more of which were handled by Gainesville, FL, lawyer Huntley Johnson. That’s not saying the 10 mentioned above should be thrown out the window, but they can certainly be put in perspective. Let’s take a look at the other 15 with details complied by the Orlando Sentinel.

Nine of the remaining 15 cases in the link above resulted in the player no longer being on the Gators football team. The other six were (arguably) punished accordingly and provided an opportunity to overcome their mistakes without being given up on.

The first question is this: Why is it that so many programs across the country are free from this astoundingly high number of legal issues over the same time period? Is it something these other programs are doing, or something Florida is not doing?

Ideally, the goal for any head football coach is for their players to not get in trouble, to be perfect citizens, to be the most upstanding people on campus. But in the realm of reality, that simply does not occur. In theory, coaches cannot control what their players do off the field any more than they can another student on campus.

What they can do, however, is educate, inform, punish accordingly and attempt to rehabilitate. Is Meyer responsible for his players’ indiscretions? Yes. There is no question about that. But is he to blame for their actions? Is he punishing them and providing opportunities to turn their life around or correct their mistakes?

Those are the other important questions that need to be asked.