The Back Alley Archives

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?