It was reported last night that BYU Safety Shiloah Te'o was kicked off the team, but it was not known until today for the reason. Te'o was arrested on suspicion of a DUI:
According to documents filed in Provo City Justice Court, Te'o was arrested on suspicion of failure to yield, improper lane change and DUI by Provo police on the night of Aug. 29, exactly a week before he played in the Cougars' 14-13 season-opening upset of No. 3-ranked Oklahoma at Dallas Cowboys Stadium.
Now mistakes are made and this is not going to be a place to bash the kid, but a real question to ask is if this happened on August 29th how was he allowed to play up until this point. According to head coach Bronco Mendenhall he did not know about this until last night:
Contacted Wednesday morning, Mendenhall said through BYU football spokesperson Brett Pyne that he was not made aware of Te'o's legal troubles until late last Saturday night, around midnight. Mendenhall said after investigating the matter Sunday and Monday, he decided to boot Te'o off the team after Tuesday's practice, a practice that included the participation of Te'o'.
This I find hard to believe that Bronco just found out. A football team has somewhere from 80 to 100 players and the coaches do not know the where abouts of all the players; but a DUI is pretty severe and unless there was something to keep this quiet it is very hard to believe none of the coaches --yet alone Bronco-- did not know about this.
On the whole the BYU staff that took over from Gary Crowton is doing a great job with discipline and bringing in players who will abide by the honor code, and in my opinion this is just a one time offense that was taken care of.
Te'o was a backup safety and a special teams regular in five games, making five tackles with a potential increased role form injuries.
UPDATE 8:00PM MST: Shiloah Te'o was arrested at a local 7-Eleven after leaving a liquor store and then fail to stop at a stop sign and for not signaling into the convenient store. Coach Bronco Mendenhall heard rumors about this in August and called players in which included Te'o and he said no. This is what Bronco said about the August questioning:
“It is pretty simple, In August, I heard a rumor that our players might have been involved in an altercation. I addressed our team, and then called in Shiloah and asked him if he was involved, and it was no."