Sports Illustrated Report Has Nothing To Do With Sanctions It Is About Crime In College Football

So, all the rumoring going on late last night about how a major college football program would be caught for major recruiting violations was way off. All of this seem to stem from ESPN's Colin Cowherd who said he received a text over a week ago that a big-time school would be handing recruiting violations.

Two things on that before I get to the Sports Illustrated and CBS piece: First off, Cowherd could have been way off or the violations were a different story and will be come out later. I am going with the first choice, because Cowherd made some guarantee that Utah and Colorado were going to the Pac-10 back in April and a deal was done just not ready to be announced. Well, we all know that was wrong, plus Utah and Colorado were always the choice until Pac-10 Commissioner Larry Scott felt he could grab Texas and the Big 12 South. All the searching last night to try to dig up more info was all a waste of time, thanks Cowherd!

OK, enough of that.

This major college football news was an article by Sports Illustrated and CBS about crime in college football, and the good news that TCU was to receive was that they had no players charged with a crime during the investigation of this report of top 25 teams. It is a lengthy report and an interesting read, so I will not really attempt to go into deep details, but here are some details of what they found:

• Seven percent of the players in the preseason Top 25 -- 204 in all (1 of every 14) -- had been charged with or cited for a crime, including dozens of players with multiple arrests.

• Of the 277 incidents uncovered, nearly 40 percent involved serious offenses, including 56 violent crimes such as assault and battery (25 cases), domestic violence (6), aggravated assault (4), robbery (4) and sex offenses (3). In addition there were 41 charges for property crimes, including burglary and theft and larceny.

 

• There were more than 105 drug and alcohol offenses, including DUI, drug possession and intent to distribute cocaine.

 

• Race was not a major factor. In the overall sample, 48 percent of the players were black and 44.5 percent were white. Sixty percent of the players with a criminal history were black and 38 percent were white.

 

• In cases in which the outcome was known, players were guilty or paid some penalty in nearly 60 percent of the 277 total incidents.

Pitt was the biggest offender who was ranked in the Sports Illustrated top 25 who had 22 players charged and according to the school they do not do a complete background check:

"This evaluation is not a legal criminal background check," the school said in a statement. "Rather, it is a checklist of questions that attempts to gain greater knowledge of the behavior and citizenship of an individual prospect from a variety of people."

That may change now that this report had surfaced. Here is the chart about preseason top 25 teams and players charged with crimes.

The big surprise to me was the amount of charges Boise State had, because I do not recall any criminal behavior coming out of Boise this past year. Utah with five is also intriguing, I am trying to remember what charges went against them this past year and I am not sure outside of the recent happening with Nai Fotu.

Here are a few videos from the report:

The best comment I have seen on this comes from twitter and is priceless: