Players who leave the program

[UKFBFAN]

With the departure of Denzil Ware and others I have begun to wonder if we are giving some good players a chance to come and try to walk the straight and narrow. Do we take some players we know are a risk? If so, how is that playing out? What's the percentage in that? For some it's grades and for others it may be something else.

This isn't to say I oppose second chances; I just wonder if it is working.

[40bill]

That's a hard question to answer. Giving up on a young person is a hard gig. Sometimes all you can do is say 'here it is'....chance for education, to be in a different environment, to chase your dream.

[Matt Dillon]

Unless one has access to inside info, which I don't, this is a very difficult question to answer. Personally, I don't have a problem with taking a chance on someone, especially if it's grade related or a minor brush with the law. Someone that's been convicted of any type of assault or dealing drugs, I wouldn't touch if I were in coach Stoops' shoes.

[RV]

The position that UK/Stoops are and have been means they have to take more chances on at risk kids than the upper tier programs to increase their talent. That's just a fact. Given we have enrolled 100% of the last three classes, it must mean we are taking fewer chances in the area of qualifiers. As to who and how many of the guys we take a chance on with suspect character, we can only guess from reading the tea leaves as their career at UK unfolds.

[Lighthouse]

The top tier programs take chances too. I was talking about this very thing with a staunch Bama fan, and he said he got upset with Saban on occasion when he looks the other way to keep a kid.

[Blue Heaven]

I want the best character players but with any athlete there are massive egos for the most part. Particularly in football where it's all about strength, size, and knocking the snot out of the opponent.

[40bill]

To be honest, I think top tier programs such as Alabama do not get as much coverage on player incidents. Tennessee, Florida, tOSU jump out at me....anyone think Ezekial Elliott just recently had 'issues'?
Bobby Bowden was one of my all time favorite coaches, and his school earned that Free Shoes U nickname.
For whatever reason, two schools in conference, Georgia and Kentucky, seem to have a direct pipeline from student discipline offices straight to their city papers. As good a human being as Mark Richt seems to me, his teams seemed to run a ten percent problem with the law.

Kentucky's issue seems to be (with the exception of this last case) it's always a kid we'd pinned big hopes on.

[largebluej]

I hope that Coach Stoops has looked into the recruitment of Marcus Walker. In that instance the staff whiffed horribly on the character research. You are always going to have some basically good kids do stupid things. In Walker's case, it doesn't look like he was a football player who got into trouble with drugs. Seems like he was a drug dealer who played football on the side.

[boomdaddy]

You are not going to be able to 100% vet each kid. Also, some kids get a bad reputation and they are really good kids. If everyone of them were running for office, there would be thousand people doing the work for you, but then you would have to additional work to determine what is true and what is manufactured.

For the sheer number of kids, I am pretty happy with how few times they have made the paper for something negative. I do wish the Walker situation hadn't happened, but in the grand scheme of things, it has been quiet.

[Spiritof96]

ahem...

I'll just leave this here. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/sp...yer-years.html

As the University of Florida dominated college football for the better half of a decade under Coach Urban Meyer, the Gators accumulated numbers — of victories and accolades and championships — at dizzying rates. In six seasons, they won 65 games, two Southeastern Conference championships and two national titles.

In recent years, though, another number has been affixed to the Meyer era. That number is 31, as in, at least 31 arrests of Florida ’s football players from 2005 to 2010.