Thug-a-riffic
Hillary at Antidisingenuousmentarianism has brought the plight of Tavares Kearney to our attention.
The son of obnoxious V-103 morning personality Wanda Smith, Kearney apparently got caught cheating on a food and nutrition test - again, I say, a food and nutrition test - by using his cell phone to get answers. The graduate assistant asked for the phone, which Kearney handed over before thinking 'gee, I'd like to keep that.' So, in turn, he grabbed the graduate assistant's wrist, twisted hard and ripped the phone from her hand before darting out of the class.
Kearney now faces expulsion - which he should - and this would bring the number of 2005 signees who will not attend Georgia to seven out of 19. That's not a good ratio. Even returning players are facing problems. Zeb McKinzey is suspended for the first game after drunkenly breaking into a student's apartment and falling asleep on the sofa; Derrick White was booted from the team after being arrested twice in three months; Michael Turner was busted for speeding and pot ... hell, Darrius Swain spent almost a month in jail.
So I'm not entirely sure who's going to suit up for Georgia in the fall ... which is I'm relying on their success in NCAA Football 2006 to get me through (D.J. Shockley is ridiculous and they made Quentin Moses an uber-defensive end).
The son of obnoxious V-103 morning personality Wanda Smith, Kearney apparently got caught cheating on a food and nutrition test - again, I say, a food and nutrition test - by using his cell phone to get answers. The graduate assistant asked for the phone, which Kearney handed over before thinking 'gee, I'd like to keep that.' So, in turn, he grabbed the graduate assistant's wrist, twisted hard and ripped the phone from her hand before darting out of the class.
Kearney now faces expulsion - which he should - and this would bring the number of 2005 signees who will not attend Georgia to seven out of 19. That's not a good ratio. Even returning players are facing problems. Zeb McKinzey is suspended for the first game after drunkenly breaking into a student's apartment and falling asleep on the sofa; Derrick White was booted from the team after being arrested twice in three months; Michael Turner was busted for speeding and pot ... hell, Darrius Swain spent almost a month in jail.
So I'm not entirely sure who's going to suit up for Georgia in the fall ... which is I'm relying on their success in NCAA Football 2006 to get me through (D.J. Shockley is ridiculous and they made Quentin Moses an uber-defensive end).
posted by Jmac at 12:02 PM
5 Comments:
Richt's campaign to make his players Christians, thus, is working.
[In the Žižekian sort-of way.]
Richt's good demeanor isn't going to get him many more free passes.
People are getting sick of this.
I don't know if folks are growing less tolerant of Richt - he has doled out appropriate punishments - but there will be more scrutiny I think on who he recruits now. He's got, on the whole, good kids in the program. This 2005 crop of signees is apparently half-and-half with good and bad.
Of course, some of those kids just didn't get the grades and that happens ... and they're taking the appropriate steps to get the grades (Darius Dewberry is one example). But you've got folks like Jamar Cheney and Tavarus Kearney who appear to be, well, punks. And Richt has typically done a pretty good choosing kids, but this year hasn't been good for him.
The bad apples have been really bad.
Right. As long as Richt punishes this stuff when it happen, and doesn't deliberately recruit thugs (as some schools appear to do), I don't know what more we can ask of him.
College is full of punks who break the rules and do completely stupid things. If an athlete does it, then suddenly we all apply a "Leave it to Beaver" standard and wonder what has become of the "scholar-athlete." Hey, the same thing that has become of the "scholar-fratboy," the "scholar-drunk-with-my-friends-dude," and the "scholar-daddy-takes-care-of-everything-boy"
That story about Kerney could just have easily been about some non-athlete. Students cheat on tests. Whoever does it should be hammered, hard. But if it happens to be an athelete every now and then, well that's just the law of averages. Not a sign that Richt should be kicked to the curb. (Or that college athletics is in a shambles)
Plus, from what I understand, recruiting borderline kids has actually sort of been Richt's strategy (at least academically), the point being that if they _do_ make the grades, all the better for Georgia, and if they don't, they're less likely to go to one of our division rivals immediately (and more likely to end up at a junior college or other smaller school).
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