Boys Acting Badly

Well it is that time of the year again. No, not the opening of camps although that is coming soon for college football. It is the time for summer arrests and suspensions and we are getting word of more each day. While I am not condoning the bad behavior and feel that scholarship athletes--or scholarship band members--should be held at a higher standard and if they commit serious crimes then they should be punished swiftly, I do feel that we should put the seemingly large number of recent arrests in context. There are a lot of college football players. And while not every arrest makes the paper, nor even every crime leads to an arrest, the reality is that a very small number of college football players break the law. Punish them but do not point fingers at the sport. One of the most recent star players to be accused of a crime is TCU defensive end Devonte Fields, who has been suspended from the Horned Frogs after his ex-girlfriend accused him of punching her in the face and pointing a gun at her. That is serious and comes seven months after fields was involved in an altercation with armed men. There is something wrong here and TCU must do the right thing. This program has made great strides over the past decade and a half but has stumbled of late with a number of players arrested for their involvement in a drug selling operation and other players getting in trouble. And with the team trying to rebound from a 4-8 season we have this situation. But despite the pressure to not do so, coach Gary Patterson must punish his best player if he is indeed guilty. There is no way to get around that as the country needs to see that TCU players are held accountable for their actions.