Ohio State RB Carlos Hyde has been suspended from the Ohio State football team for an alleged assault against a female, prompting yet another examination of the caliber of college student athlete being recruited today. While it is true that NCAA student athletes have been in trouble before, the types of arrests being made with many of today’s star athletes go far beyond academic ineligibility or public intoxication. Instead, things like assault, gun charges, and drug busts seem to be becoming the norm.
As an OSU alum, I admit that I have more of an interest in what happens at Ohio State – but I’m also concerned about these same types of stories seemingly popping up everywhere, especially at high-powered football schools. Not only is the frequency of crime going up, but the nature of the arrests are becoming very concerning. All of this prompts me to wonder about an apparent paradigm shift we are seeing in college football today – where we once used to hope (and even have expectations) star players to be role models, today we only worry about them staying eligible.
While I realize that the competing arguments in this discussion tend to center around things like “how can a coach manage all of his players” and “there will always be some young people who make young people decisions,” I don’t think those responses are good enough these days. If we were talking about a few kids here and there not making the grade in the classroom, or being caught with an underage consumption violation at a party, I would more readily accept those excuses. Unfortunately, those are the types of crimes that coaches hope for these days when they receive a call about a player, as they know that increasingly more often the arrests are more like Hyde’s at OSU.
Being a role model used to be expected and assumed from student athletes, but today it has morphed into becoming the gold standard — the exception, not the norm. This is quite sad, and says as much about the players as it does the universities who disregard character and exclusively focus on wins.
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