The Twitterverse and message boreds exploded this morning with a wrath against Caleb. He was arrested. He had stolen something. He needed to be kicked off the team!!!
I'm just as frustrated as the next guy about the number of (mostly petty) arrests. But this deserves a little perspective. Here's what happened the way I understand it.
Caleb was asleep this morning when he agreed to take a teammate to get his car from AC-C. They checked his name and a hit came up from Walton Co for a speeding ticket in July.
Is it Caleb's responsibility to make sure the fine is paid? Yes. But he was advised by people he trusts that everything was in order, no problem. If your own position coach assures you there isn't a problem, it's second nature to rest at ease. So he does a friend a favor and ends up getting held in jail.
From what I can gather the only thing Caleb is guilty of is having a brother who has gotten into some trouble and being a good friend to a teammate. So let's slow our roll a bit.
If we as fans want our players to have high expectations for themselves, we have to recognize that that is a two way street.
7 comments:
I would think at this point that the players, coaches and traffic czars need to triple check this info. Not sure what hurts recruiting more, being 2-4 or now 11 arrests.
Granted these are not the Nebraska bash your girlfriends head off a mailbox arrests, but it is on their record. And being the owner of the Fulmer Cup each one is front page news.
Also what does this do for the RB line up, Ealey has butter fingers at the goal line, Thomas is Hurt, King will sit a game, so who is Number 4 on the list.
Note to the UGA Traffic Czar, get a new job.
Thanks for the up date.
What does giving a friend a ride to pick up a vehicle have anything to do with giving your name and ID to a Police Officer? Why would they run Kings name and such???
AthensHomerDawg... Great question. I think we all know the two-part answer and being a football player is only half of it.
They ran his name because he was going to drive the car back. Now why the owner couldn't drive it back is another issue. I'm betting he has a bad lic as well.
Question: who is paying to bail these guys out or repay the money to charities. Just asking.
At some point though the court system appears to be at least complicit, if not an active participant, in putting these players in the worst situation. When a bench warrant is issued for a UGA athlete, the Sheriff's department certainly knows where to find the offending athlete. Instead they hold the warrant until the athlete slips up again, thereby giving law enforcement the opportunity to pile on. At this point, I wouldn't doubt if every UGA athlete has some form of bench warrant outstanding for something and the local Barney Fife's are just waiting to spring it so they can grab a headline.
I may be mistaken, but bench warrants aren't the hunt them down type of warrants. Thus they wouldn't go after anyone until there is a reason to look them up, in this case from what I have seen, is the cops ran the lics of the person that would be driving the car back, this is pretty standard.
Now I believe that the UGAA was supposed to run each license of each player to check for warrants and issues. So somewhere there is a disconnect.
A bench warrant and an arrest warrant are not the same thing.
A bench warrant says "this guy missed his appointment with the judge, so if you happen to run into this guy, that judge would like him brought before the bench."
An arrest warrant says "the state/county/nation believes this guy has committed a crime and we would like him brought before a judge immediately so kindly go find him for us."
Again, I feel the Program should have a better system in place to ensure our guys' license/ticket/driving situations are properly handled. Same kinda stuff happens to all college kids, it just has bigger consequences when you're on the football team.
Go Dawgs!
Post a Comment