Ron Higgins has his latest SEC preseason football rankings up here and here. One thing he tracks is the offseason arrest rate for every program over the past six seasons, and according to his records, Vanderbilt has a noteworthy achievement in that regard: zero arrests.
Here’s the complete list.
- Vanderbilt: 0.0
- Missouri: 0.14
- Tennessee: 0.5
- Arkansas: 0.67
- Kentucky: 0.67
- Mississippi: 0.67
- Alabama: 0.83
- South Carolina: 0.83
- Ole Miss: 1.17
- Texas A&M: 1.17
- Auburn: 1.5
- Georgia: 1.5
- LSU: 1.67
- Florida: 2.33
Vandy may be the conference’s champions of life, but Huntley Johnson is Florida’s MVP.
Get The Picture 
How can Vanderbilt be zero with the rape case there?
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Timing.
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Wasn’t the rape in the summer of 2013?
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It looks like they weren’t arrested/charged until August.
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Can’t wait to watch Jason Eason play this year.
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I’m skeptical for this reason…all of these schools don’t deal with the same law enforcement conditions. What gets covered up, over-looked, or dealt with on an “internal” basis? Do campus police departments all follow the same guidelines on dealing with unruly athletes? In these regards, it seems that UGA is at a disadvantage. I readily admit to being a paranoid Georgia fan and maybe I’m making too much of what my mind tells me is an unfair comparison.
It’s hard to imagine that an institution that puts so much of it’s energy and money into it’s football program, to the point that the school’s very identity is tied to it’s football program’s success, and secures that success to the tune of eleven million dollars a year plus bonuses for one man, would overlook a little matter such as influencing the local police dept to cooperate with that program. How that influence is administered would be a good study, but I suspect it’s just plain old fashioned “Roll Tide” enthusiasm at every level in the town (and state, outside of the AU sphere) .
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The same theory would apply at UT and a couple of other places..and to a lesser degree, most any big time school program. A matter of degree, I suppose. Apparently, CMR , to his great credit, didn’t play that game, or played it poorly.
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I wonder how RA’s at Bama are instructed to report strange smells coming out of player’s dorm rooms.
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May is ‘processing’ season at Alabama, so I’m confident they are instructed to contact the designated staff member in the Athletic Department.
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For all the sanctimony we get out of Butts Mehre, the most ironic part is that no one outside of that building considers us the paragon of virtue in college athletics.
By objective measures like these arrest statistics and subjective perceptions of program cleanliness by memories of past scandals (Jan Kemp, Jim Harrick, Todd Gurley, Damon Evans), we don’t even have the perception of being clean as the price for all the championships we are not winning.
I understand that Jimmy Williamson skews the arrest numbers against us and the AJC celebrates the opportunity to make a misdemeanor arrest a scandal, but what does all this get us except for some choice appointments to the NCAA “sportsmanship committee”?
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I’d say UGA’s athletics department and community has one strong positive and one strong negative in regards to athlete discipline. 1) The team actually holds players accountable and doesn’t want to enable people that do shameful things to others. 2) UGA has too many “mandatory” suspensions and disciplinary measures, especially for victimless “crimes” like, gasp, smoking marijuana. The community and school should lay off the victimless stuff but continue to be a good example to other schools in terms of tossing out the violent and unethical players.
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The Process objects to your use of the present-tense sir….
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“What does all this get us except for some choice appointments to the NCAA ‘sportsmanship committee’?”
For years, it gave Dr. Adams the opportunity to draw attention away from his own transgressions.
Now that he is gone, no one in the university has the political fortitude to realign our policies with the rest of the SEC schools. Instead, there appears to be some moderation to the ‘zero tolerance’ enforcement approach of the Adams years.
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For the most part, at least half or more of those schools all recruit the same type of kids…so if the kids are the same, what is different? Not hard to figure it out.
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Exactly! And not just ‘type’…but the exact same kids. When a coach loses a kid he was recruiting to another school, it’s just hypocrisy to point the figure at THAT program when the kid goes astray.
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Huntley. Johnson. Which one is his last name? Why doesn’t he have a first name? You can’t trust a guy that doesn’t have a first name.
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So Vandy not only beat us on the field, but they rub it in by also being the champions of life.
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Proof that Nashville is a real city and not just a college town.
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If they count the entire year for arrests, we win it in a rout.
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So in the non-severity rankings, a drivers license violation, or a 20 year with a can of beer or BB gun is rated equally with rape and physical assault. These rankings are as worthless as “way too early” rankings before a down is played. Yep, nothing to see here, move on along.
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