BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - Forget the excuse that lots of college kids drink and do stupid things, even the ones that don't start at center for SEC football teams.Don't try to rationalize Auburn center Reese Dismukes getting arrested - and suspended - a week before the opener against Clemson as an isolated example of boys being boys.It's not.It's time to take a hard look at the accumulation of issues involving current, former and future Auburn players this calendar year alone and ask a hard question that everyone from the school president to the athletics director to the head coach himself should be asking.What kind of football program is Gene Chizik running?Is it a program whose coaches take too many chances on talent at the expense of character in recruiting to try to keep up with their very successful rivals?Is it a program whose players keep seeing their teammates get suspended and dismissed for their actions but, for some reason, don't seem to get the message?Is it a program, not quite two years removed from a national championship, with serious cracks in its foundation?Dismukes got arrested at 2:03 a.m. Saturday on a charge of public intoxication. That's far from a felony, but it's a problem on a number of levels.He's a returning starter. He's 19 years old, which means, if he's guilty of that charge, he's also guilty of underage drinking, perhaps not for the first time. And his arrest is just the latest example of an Auburn football player embarrassing himself, his teammates, his coaches and his program.It's not good enough anymore to argue that other schools also recruited the Auburn players that have gotten into trouble. The fact is, these players are getting into trouble while at Auburn, or in one case, on the way there, and it's happening in numbers too big to ignore. Consider the rest of the lengthening and troubling rap sheet from this year alone:Starting tailback Mike Dyer, after getting suspended for the Chick-fil-a Bowl for an undisclosed violation of team rules, leaves the program for Arkansas State. He's later dismissed from that program after a traffic stop in which the arresting officer says he found marijuana and a gun in the car.Former wide receiver Antonio Goodwin is convicted on a charge of armed robbery and sentenced to 15 years in jail. Three other former players - Mike McNeil, Shaun Kitchens and Dakota Mosley - await trial on charges stemming from that same March, 2011, home invasion.At Goodwin's trial, Dyer testifies that the gun used in the robbery was his. Dyer also testifies that, during his two years at Auburn, he "consistently" smoked synthetic marijuana. Another player, DeAngelo Benton, testifies that he has smoked synthetic marijuana while at Auburn.True freshman quarterback Zeke Pike is arrested on a charge of public intoxication and sent home by Chizik, with no timetable set for a return. Pike decides to transfer to Louisville to play tight end.Six people are shot, three fatally, at a party just off campus. One of the wounded, Eric Mack, is a current Auburn player. Two of the deceased, Ed Christian and Ladarious Phillips, are former Auburn players. At the preliminary hearing, a witness testifies that the trouble started with a verbal disagreement between the alleged killer, Desmonte Leonard, and Benton, who allegedly pointed at Leonard and said, "That boy is going to die tonight."Benton, a senior wide receiver, is later suspended indefinitely for an undisclosed violation of a team rule.Sophomore defensive back Jonathan Rose is sent home and given his release from the football team for undisclosed reasons, though his Leeds High School coach says the reasons have "nothing to do with grades or anything that deals with the police." Rose transfers to Nebraska.True freshman tailback Jovon Robinson starts fall camp, then is sidelined when the Memphis City Schools say that a high school guidance counselor altered his transcript. The NCAA deems Robinson a non-qualifier, which forces him to leave Auburn. The NCAA interviews a former high school coach of Robinson's, as well as his 7-on-7 team coach.Auburn five-star defensive line commitment Dee Liner gets arrested twice in 10 days in July, once for an altercation with a police officer that had pulled over his mother and the second time for criminal trespassing for jumping a fence at a public pool. In August, Liner is suspended indefinitely by his Muscle Shoals High School team after walking out of practice.Put it all together, and all the trouble is a disturbing trend.It's one thing to lose five games on either side of a national championship season, with another handful of defeats a distinct possibility this season. It's far more suspect in a head coach's fourth year on the job to lose player after player to suspension or dismissal.The disciplinary actions taken by Chizik suggest that the program isn't out of control. The repeated need for disciplinary action raises the possibility that the program is headed in that direction.
Great article except for bringing up the shooting and Dee Liner.
We have a big problem on the plains.
There's an article on al.com (which is basically Alabama's secular Bible at this point) today by Kevin Scarbinsky of the Birmingham News, entitled "What kind of program is Gene Chizik running at Auburn?"You and I, as Florida fans, are aware of the contours of writing like this: It begins with an outlining of problems, then cites the mounting pile of arrest reports as the reason it is now time to X-ray a program's soul, then calls it all a "disturbing trend" and finishes with a flourish and the phrase "out of control."We read more than a few columns like this during the last two years of Urban Meyer's tenure, when lists of those arrests became worthwhile compilations and the questioning of Meyer's commitment to building character got loud enough to drown out the cheers for a team that wasn't giving fans quite as many reasons to roar.We should not have had to deal with columns like those. No one should have to deal with them. And it's not because laws should be adhered to at all times.Star-divideFlorida's situation then and Auburn's now are very different, and not only because Chizik is dealing with the aftermath of a fatal shooting that killed two young men who played for him. Auburn's fall from the national championship season of 2010 to its current state of confusion is made more stark by Alabama's perennial brilliance, and the Cam Newton recruitment has made journalists skeptical of Auburn's recruiting practices.But the way these narrative arcs are constructed remains the same as it ever was, and both the assembly of the narratives and the final products are disgusting. Reporters and columnists who are unable or unequipped or disinclined to do anything but find a landing area for blame don't ask why crimes are committed, or suggest ways to prevent them, instead making it clear that coaches need to be punished for failing to prevent college-aged men from being arrested, further infantilizing adults who get dismissed as "kids" by fans, media members, and coaches alike, and generally skirting over the reasons why those arrests happened in the specific cases and happen in the aggregate.That template, best dubbed the Coach Loses Control Arc (and brilliantly skewered by the Mark Richt Has Lost Control Of... retort), is genuinely one of the worst things about sports journalism. It requires those who specialize in black-and-white binary judgments and stories about "heroes" and "villains" to simplify an issues that rarely escape the deepest grays. It should be challenged and/or ignored whenever possible, with appeals made to journalists to get the fullest story from as many angles as possible instead of the juiciest take from a limited viewpoint.But I sure am happy that Florida fans will be able to do more ignoring than challenging this year.
Urban Meyer was asked about his discipline policy. At Florida, the program had at least 31 arrests during Meyer’s six-year tenure. Of those, 10 included felony charges but they were either reduced to misdemeanors or dropped altogether in nine of those cases.
But it only happens in Auburn..Get a rope I'm going after Gene.
What's the problem?
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