SI/CBS News: College Football and Crime
Just read this SI/CBS News article about college football and crime:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/the_bonus/02/27/cfb.crime/index.html?eref=sihp
Wanted to share. Editor's note - Iowa, WOW!
Discuss.
Looks like you win the speed typing award.
AND I checked back three or four pages on the board as I didn't want to get hammered by everyone telling me it was already posted. Fear the MGoCommunity!
Pro Tip: A brief summary of the article is probably a good idea. That'll eliminate 65% of the snark posts right off the bat. JMO.
Will do next time! Anything to reduce the snark ...
You can still edit your OP. Just click on the Edit button at the bottom of the box and type away.
iowa and wisconsin both surprised me for being so high, and oregon and florida seemed a little lower than i thought
ya i read there was a total of like 20 something or 32 ish total arrests on florida's team, i guess a lot of them never got charged for shit
The big 10 holding strong with 4 of the top 11 spots with most players charged impressive.. lol what a joke
Looks like we are kicking the SEC's ass in players charged...
...which means we have a functioning justice system.
I'm sure that the defense used by the Pitt player described in the story ("But I play for Pitt football...") when arrested actually works all the time for players in the South.
Wait, so is this the big bombshell that was supposed to drop on a certain Big Time College Football Program?
Last night the claim on the internet was that SI was supposed to drop the big story today.
Is this it or was that simply two stories getting crossed on the interwebs?
Because I have to say that this will not end up being a big deal at all for any program. At least I doubt it.
I too am hoping for something a little more substantial. I heard a top 10-12 program or something which Pitt def isn't (but I'm not even sure that's who is getting the most flack in the article).
I wondered this, too. I was up quite late and checked SI's website around 2 am to see if anything wast posted. This article hadn't appeared yet, but was up when I got up this morning at 7:30ish. A little disappointing if this is indeed the "big story".
I was thinking the same thing. This story amounts to a whole lot of nothing IMO. Most people that follow college football are aware of the crime issues that do occur. I think CBS/SI may have come across some bigger recruiting issues while researching for this story with the intent of dropping a second story later.
Spacing the big stories out means more eyeballs over a longer period of time. I would also assume that any story dealing with recruiting allegations is more difficult to verify (since recruiting violations are typically not going to be in the public record) and requires more verification (to keep the lawyers happy).
Well, I guess if ever there's a reason to be happy Michigan is not in SI's Top 25, this would be it.
Did I miss something - Where is Michigan State on the list?
I wondered the same thing too, but it only includes schools that were in this study. If they had included MSU, I think they'd have at least ranked in the middle of the pack.
This makes him mad...
I would think MSU would be at the top. Didn't the whole ski mask incident count as a criminal record for all those involved? Wasn't it close to 15 players?
Michigan State did not start the year in SI's Top 25 which is why they are not on the list. Good thing for the Big Ten too since they would obviously be towards the top of the list. Dantonio is a scum bag.
<Edit: Guess I should have read further down the page where what I just wrote was already posted virtually verbatum. Sorry>
Maybe. I can't remember how many of those players were dismissed. I think it wasn't very many. Any players dismissed from the team would not have counted towards the total, though. These numbers reflected only those on the roster at the beginning of the year. I think that's also why Oregon wasn't higher.
Michigan State was not in the preseason top-25, and therefore was not included in the report.
here. In essence (these are all quotes from the Dr Sat article):
- 7 percent of players on teams ranked in SI's 2010 preseason top 25 had some kind of criminal record in their past
- About 3.5 percent of college students have a criminal record
- Based on 2000 Census data, about 6.6 percent of the population will serve prison time at some point in their lifetime. That number jumps significantly (to somewhere between 9 percent and 11 percent) for males, higher than the rate in the SI/CBS study. About 4.4 percent of the population was arrested for some kind of crime in 2009.
- That's without an attempt to take into account the much higher arrest and incarceration rates for young, black males – 1 in 9 black males between ages 20 and 34 was incarcerated in 2008 – who are significantly overrepresented (compared to the population at large) in the SI/CBS study. Do with the numbers what you will, but do it with all the numbers.
I think the criticism misses the main point of the article. These kids are given a free education to represent their respective universities. I don't think it matters that the numbers given by SI are similar to society as a whole. Having all these kids represent the universities, giving them free educations, and allowing them to use the university as a stepping point to playing professionally sets a precedent that illegal behavior is acceptable if you're a good athlete.
If athletes are about as criminal as the rest of the student body, then we should be running background checks on all scholarship recipients (athletic and academic) and not just on athletes.
In any case, I think the criticism is aimed at the implication in the article that football players are more likely to be criminals.
I am so conflicted on this.
On the one hand I agree: if you want to play you need to stay out of trouble, period. And if schools started doing background checks and eliminating players with records - how many players behind them might be more likely to stay out of trouble?
"Joe got arrested breaking into someone's house, but he was able to get the charges dropped for an intervention, and still got his scholarship to Big Time U."
- or -
"Joe got arrested breaking into someone's house. Big Time U, and all the other majors pulled their scholarship offers. Joe really blew his chance at the Big Time."
On the other hand, I live in a neighborhood with a large group of upper middle class residents on one side, and subsidized housing on the other. Teens on both sides get in trouble on occasion for stupid teen things: drugs, stealing alcohol, breaking signs off posts (and other acts of "why did you do that?" / "I don't know I was bored" vandalism), etc. There are two major differences: 1) the kids on the upper middle class side are more likely to have both parents in the household (to keep an eye on them and set them straight) and 2) the kids on the upper middle class side are better bankrolled so they don't have to resort to theft to provide for their other stupid teen activities.
Don't know ... I lean toward the set the example, and reward those who tow the line.
Big Time College football players are not like other students in many critical ways. In some ways to their advantage. In some ways to their disadvantage.
No one would argue that their ability to obtain a free education in a very high profile activity makes them way different. They should be under a greater level of scrutiny because of the very public nature of their sport. Run a background check. A decent one costs like $20 online.
The CBS news report noted that TCU runs a check on all student athletes. Their results speak for themselves.
from slowstates.com:
"According to the statistics given (and remember, this inexplicably only includes a sample size of the Sports Illustrated Preseason top 25), seven percent of players have been charged with or cited for a crime. Of those seven percent, “nearly 60 percent…were guilty or paid some penalty”. If we assume “nearly 60 percent” means 57% (shockingly, the actual numbers and survey methods aren’t given), then 4% of players on top 25 football teams have been actually convicted of, or plead guilty to, a crime.
The number of average college students with the same criminal record?According to this article from Corvallis, Oregon’s Daily Barometer, 3.45%. That’s right: Your typical college football player is one-half of one percent more likely to have a criminal conviction. To put that in perspective, a team of 85 players has half a person more convicted criminals on it than a sample of 85 students drawn randomly. Hide yo kids, hide yo wife."
(shockingly, the actual numbers and survey methods aren’t given)
The actual numbers were posted in real time simultaneously with the CBS piece in the SI vault along with the full SI articles - they even got into some of the juvenile records.
This "expose" is less than it could have been by a long shot. This has a sample size of dumb; comparison set of dumber and a conclusion of ... well ... draw your own conclusions.
After I read Spencer Hall's takedown, I had to go check the SI article itself to see if Michael Rosenberg had written it since he's now at SI. But it just looks like he has spread his brand of "investigative" journalism to the other writers at SI. The methods are shockingly similar.
I thought the exact same thing when I read about this. And it pisses me off to see so many people say "ohhh...great journalism." That's horseshit. Its half of a good journalism piece.
If you're going to point out the police record rate for a segment of the population, you need to give it some context. Numbers don't mean shit unless you have something to compare them to. If they were going to go through all of the trouble of digging into the police records of ~2100 kids (85 roster spots * 25 teams), then take the extra step of investigating other college sports too -- like basketball, baseball, lacrosse, women's sports, etc. All of those sports have significantly smaller rosters and would have taken much less time. Take those numbers, compare them to the football numbers, the numbers of the general student population, and the general population at large, and THEN if something sticks out, you report it.
The big story isn't supposed to drop until closer to summer. I don't think this is it.
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.Somebody wanna calculate a p value on that one?
Given the 85 man roster and 25 team sample testing whether the true proportion of white football players with a criminal history equals the true proportion of black football players with a criminal history I get a z value of 2.79. For a p value of 0.005.
I used the pooled sample proportion for the calculation of the error term.
When juvenile court determines that a kid has been adequately punished for his transgressions, it isn't the school's duty to punish him further by not allowing him to play sports. I think the more important number is the number of players who commit crimes while they are in school or on the team.
I think almost any kid deserves a chance to succeed in college. I think a kid with a troubled background should get a chance to play under a "zero tolerance" policy, just as a so-called "good kid" should.
If a player commits a felony or violent misdemeanor while representing the school, though, that player should be kicked off of the team. I would possibly make an exception to a one-on-one fight with both participants consenting, but there's a big difference between a teenager making a mistake out of ignorance or because of the culture of his environment and a player on scholarship committing a crime while representing the university.
It seems like SI thinks these kids should be held to a higher standard simply because we choose to pay attention to their athletic ability.
Can't we make a single top 25 list?!
Just kidding...
But seriously...
Were robbing houses together (allegedly...I think). This is the same mess that Demar was involved in that fueled the Freep's jihad against him.
"Taking that same view, Wisconsin's Bret Bielema signed linebacker Kevin Claxton even though Claxton had been convicted in conjunction with a home burglary in November 2007. When he was 18, Claxton drove the getaway car after a small group of teenagers broke into a home near Lauderdale Lakes, Fla. He was a prized recruit at Boyd Anderson High at the time of his arrest, but his dream of playing in college seemed dashed after he was charged with felony burglary."
A certain former Michigan football coach was regarded by many in the media as running some sort of thug program, yet Michigan doesn't show up on the list of the programs with players in trouble. However, the teams of such well-respected and highly-regarded coaches as Kirk Ferentz, Joe Paterno, Jim Tressel, and Bret Beilema are there. Imagine that.
That was my exact thinking. The outrage was incredible for potentially letting one individual with a criminal past (Demar Dorsey) sign a LOI. Yet close to 30 % of Pitts team is equivalent...
If UM had been in the preseason top 25, they would have been included.
They only list teams who were on SI's preseason top 25...