When Nevada football Chris Ault took over the program last winter, he said he wouldn't tolerate any garbage from his players and that he would have a zero tolerance policy.
Unfortunately, he had to invoke that new rule a lot quicker than he certainly wanted. The veteran coach booted starting cornerback Steven Murphy and defensive lineman Brenton Kendrick off the team after the pair were arrested a week ago in downtown Reno.
Kendrick was arrested on suspicion of the sale of cocaine, consipracy to violate the controlled substance act and obstructing/resisting an officer, according to the Associated Press story. Murphy was arrested on the suspicion of a felony charge of the sale of cocaine and conspiracy and obstructing/resisting an officer.
For Murphy it was his second arrest in two years. He was already put on probation after pleading guilty to a petty theft charge.
Those were the fifth and sixth arrests of football players recruited by former coach Chris Tormey, who was fired by then athletic director Ault after a 6-6 season in 2003.
Under Ault's new policy, a student-athlete arrested on a felony charge is immediately dismissed from the team, and an appeals process is in place if the charge is reduced to a misdemeanor or dropped.
It's a good policy. The student-athletes have to be held accountable for their actions, and by all means shouldn't get any special treatment because they are football players.
It's a black mark against the school, the families of the arrested players and our society.
Because it takes so much money to survive in our world these days, both parents in most families are working, thus the kids are left to fend for themselves, and that's not a good thing. It's even worse in a single-family situation where the mother or father may have to work two jobs to keep a family in housing, clothes and food. That's where I blame our society, because it has gotten a lot tougher to make ends meet in the last 20 or 30 years. Rising food prices, rising real estate prices and rising gas prices make it difficult on most citizens. The sad thing is that wages haven't kept up with the cost of living.
I don't believe that these players suddenly lost their values when they came to Reno to get an education and play football. My educated guess is that these kids had issues when they were growing up, hence either parental support wasn't there or the kids were weak mentally and give into peer pressure.
The school, however, has to accept some of the blame. The coaches need to do some more homework on some of these kids, check their backgrounds a little more thoroughly. Don't just recruit athletic ability. Recruit good people.
I know the onus is on every coach at every university to win. However, and I may be looking at this through rose-colored glasses, I'd rather see a Nevada football team that goes 6-5 every year, is competitive and graduates 80 to 90 percent of its players than a bunch of unsavory characters that have frequented places like Miami, Washington, and Notre Dame.
There are good players that are also good students all over the country. Look at Stanford. Look at the Ivy League schools. Heck, look at Rice. The Owls have probably the toughest academic standards in the WAC, yet they put representative teams on the field.
I hope this is the last of the problems regarding the UNR football program. I believe Ault is headed in the right direction, and I hope the veteran coach concentrates on getting good citizens and not bad actors into the program.
Contact Darrell Moody at dmoody@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1281.
