The violent criminals playing football at the nation’s colleges

An eye-opening and surprisingly frank cover article at Sports Illustrated starts with the fact that the University of Pittsburgh’s football squad, expected to be a championship team this past season, ended with four of its players arrested for violent crimes:

First, senior defensive end Jabaal Sheard was charged with aggravated assault and resisting arrest after allegedly throwing a man through the glass door of an art gallery. Authorities told SI that even after an officer arrived on the scene, Sheard continued to punch the victim in the face as he lay on his back, bleeding. Sheard was suspended from the team. But after pleading guilty to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct on Aug. 4, 2010, he was reinstated for the 2010 season.

And that’s just for starters.

Sports Illustrated goes on to inform us that only two of the Top 25 college football teams did criminal background checks of their prospective football players. So SI did its own background checks for the Top 25 and found that, of 2,837 players, seven percent had criminal records, many involving aggravated violence. SI assures us that there is no racial pattern in the offenses, but Paul at Stuff Black People Don’t Like questions that statement. He says that most of the whites were probably arrested for driving while intoxicated. The SI study doesn’t provide that sort of breakdown.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 03, 2011 07:39 PM | Send