… overlooked. Brain injury, drunk driving, gun-play — the sorts of activities significant numbers of high-profile-sports student athletes engage in — these things get less attention than bogus courses and friends with impermissible benefits, etc.
UD isn’t sure why, given the obviously greater drama of that first list… Maybe it’s because some of that stuff hasn’t happened yet, as it were (eventually some players will probably die of football-inflicted brain injuries…), and while the other stuff (drunk driving, gun-play) does happen here and now it usually doesn’t end up actually killing anyone. Plus millions of Americans play with their guns and get drunk and get into fights and all. Big deal.
The other stuff, the academic stuff, can have all sorts of NCAA implications, which can hurt team performance, etc. It can hurt eligibility.
Thus Luke DeCock, a Kansas City Star writer, notes how bizarre it is that the latest fuckup on a University of North Carolina sports team is in trouble for hanging out with a professional agent and possibly taking gifts from him and all, but no one seems to care that a gun was found just outside the car he was driving when he was recently arrested.
Drive around with a 9 mm handgun and nine rounds of ammunition … and you’re asking for real trouble. That was also found outside Hairston’s car, and while the police said Wednesday they don’t anticipate any additional charges against Hairston, there’s still no explanation for the gun. That’s the really worrying thing about this entire episode.
NCAA violations very rarely put lives at risk. Guns kill.
There have been 14 homicides in Durham in 2013 already. It’s an unchecked epidemic of violence, too much of it taking place in the same neighborhood where Hairston and his friends were arrested.
As DeCock writes:
Not to be deliberately obtuse, but while rental cars and parking tickets have added a whiff of conspiracy to P.J. Hairston’s troubles, isn’t the bigger issue that a gun was found outside the car the North Carolina basketball star was driving when he was arrested?
Apparently it’s being obtuse to believe that the weaponry student athletes are carting around is more disturbing than the mysterious Yukon SUVs they’re driving. I mean, unavoidable bottom line here seems to be that we don’t much care whether they kill themselves or even us; we care that their team remains eligible.
I think this is how you get to Aaron Hernandez.
July 14th, 2013 at 1:47AM
When Bobby Bowden was still head coach at Florida State, he made news when he told his players that they had to deposit their guns with him during practice, and pick them up later, when they left. Apparently at FSU, if you’re a footballer, it’s verboten to carry a gun to practice or have one in your car, but at all other times, it seems just fine. FSU bright lights tried to excuse it by saying that quite a number of players are hunters, so they’ll carry guns with them. But who hunts anything with a handgun, unless your prey is human.
Let’s face it, many of our athletes are bangers and dealers, who carry guns as part of their trade. What’s amazing is that fewer of these aholes haven’t been killed. The question is, if the actual situation was to become manifest to the general public, would they care? It seems that, as long as they win, no, they wouldn’t. Moral bankruptcy is what it’s called, and, and higher wins to loss ratio is worth the criminality, and occasional dead suspect….