<p>I am posting this on this board because the oversigning post was on this board and this post also has the same basis behind it: attacking the dignity of a conference or a region based upon some numbers. </p>
<p>The oversigning post lauded the Big 10 as high-standing moral agents, while the SEC (or the South in general) was filled with no good scumbags who only cared about winning.</p>
<p>Well Sports Illustrated did a criminal background investigation into programs ranked in the Top 25 before last season started.</p>
<p>Here were the results involving Big 10 and SEC schools:</p>
<p>SEC:
Arkansas- 18
Florida- 7
Alabama-5
LSU-3
Total of four schools- 33</p>
<p>Big 10:
Iowa-18
Penn State-16
Wisconsin-9
Ohio State (AKA as the epitome of dignity)-7
Total of four schools- 52</p>
<p>So we all know what this study shows right? The police in the South are lenient liberals who don't crack down in crime,while police in the North are moral agents looking to uphold strong conservative values.</p>
<p>Wait? Wouldn't one expect the opposite? That can't be it. No maybe the Big 10 actually recruits more delinquents.</p>
<p>When you add in that Arkansas is responsible for more than half of the criminal records of those 4 schools and is the only one to not have won a BCS championship since 2006, that makes the results even more astonishing. If you think maybe the South doesn't keep strong criminal records, Florida has the most open public records of any state in the country.</p>
<p>I'm from Chicago. I've lived in the South the past 3 years. A lot of the stereotypes Northerners have of the South are true. The idea that the SEC is somehow less moral than the Big 10 is garbage. It stems from nothing more than jealousy. </p>
<p>Tend to your own herd rather than accusing others of overgrazing.</p>
<p>This is easy to explain. The SEC schools drop some of their criminal upperclassmen (only if they aren’t any good of course) as soon as they can get a new crop of future convicts when oversigning occurs every year.<br>
;-)</p>
<p>“…while the SEC (or the South in general) was filled with no good scumbags who only cared about winning.”</p>
<p>If you put a hyphen between “no” and “good,” I think you’ll get the meaning you were after.</p>
<p>I think if you look below the numbers for the Big 10, you’ll find that most of the convictions at Iowa were for aggravated cow-tipping, and at Wisconsin they were for transportation of cheese across county lines for immoral purposes. The only real shady program is Ohio State, where Coach Tressel got the Columbus police to re-classify several sodomy charges as traffic violations for “following too closely behind.”</p>
<p>This was just an alarmist article that implies that there is a shocking number of criminal college athletes. However, when you actually look at the numbers, they’re very reasonable.</p>
<p>Those numbers indicate the number of players on Top 25 teams that have a police record. Out of the 2,837 players, only 204 or 7% of them have a criminal record. Of all the reported incidents, less than half (40%) were considered “serious” and only 60% were actually found guilty or paid a fine.</p>
<p>Before anyone indicts college football as a haven for convicts, they should consider that about 47 million of 307 million Americans have a criminal record. Twice the proportion of players on top 25 teams.</p>
<p>So, if you want to compare conferences, I don’t really understand why, but that’s fine. But anyone who reads the headlines and sees the “investigative report” needs to actually look at the numbers before taking the SI bait.</p>
<p>The media is out of control. There was a discussion on this article on the parents forum, too. Nothing but sensational journalism whose authors manipulated their study, didn’t put it into context and presented their results in “just the right way” in order to sell magazines and “shock” the sports world…Did you notice the SERIOUS font on the cover?..oooooohhhh…Hide the children scary!</p>
<p>Some of BYU’s rules seem quaint or even silly, but I give the school credit for living up to it’s own standards. They are paying a heavy price by suspending a star basketball player just before the NCAA tournament. Far better, IMO, than some schools which turning a blind eye to arrests for theft or even violent crimes committed by star athletes in order to keep them in the line-up.</p>
<p>These “criminal records” at some schools (e.g., Iowa) are mainly for underage consumption of alcohol and/or public drunkenness. By that measure, probably 80% or more of the students on many campuses have engaged in “criminal” activity at one time or another, and many do so on a regular basis (though of course not that many get cited for it). This “study” is just pure poppycock. </p>
<p>And LSU8888: I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Louisiana state troopers have let more than one underaged LSU football player off with a wink-and-a-nod if said player is caught with a can of Dixie in his hand on Satarday night after a big win. Especially if the kid is a starter, because underaged drinking is probably against team rules and could get the player suspended. A problem with interjurisdictional “crime” comparisons is that what’s counted as a crime, and how often it’s actually prosecuted, varies enormously. Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz acknowledges that the University of Iowa has a student culture that features alcohol prominently. So does the University of Wisconsin, but the difference in the reported number of “criminals” on the two teams is probably just that the cops on Iowa City enforce the laws against underage drinking and report violations as crimes, while the cops in Madison tolerate it up until the point it results in a drunken brawl.</p>
<p>So let’s see . . . of 18 Iowa athletes with “criminal” records, 15 were busted for alcohol consumption (either excessive or underage, both misdemeanors) , 2 for marijuana possession (likely a misdemeanor, though in some jurisdictions possession of small quantities is now not even a misdemeanor but a “citation,” same status as a parking ticket), and 1 for misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Doesn’t exactly sound like a hotbed of serious “crime” to me. Heck, maybe they should throw in the parking tickets, too, so we can see where the real “criminals” are.</p>
<p>What an absurdly sensationalized story. And LSU8888, I’m afraid it doesn’t reflect well on you or your school that you would resort to flinging such obviously nonsensical garbage.</p>