Lawyers, status, public backlash aid college athletes accused of crimes

Rainey's experience as a star athlete accused of criminal activity -- stalking, fighting, injuring someone with fireworks -- but ending up with a mostly clean record is not uncommon: From 2009 to 2014, male basketball and football players at the University of Florida and Florida State University avoided criminal charges or prosecution on average two-thirds of the time when named as suspects in police documents, a result far exceeding that of non-athlete males in the same age range, an Outside the Lines investigation has found.

Last fall, to determine how often crimes involving college athletes are prosecuted and what factors influence them, Outside the Lines requested police reports involving all football and men's basketball players on rosters from 2009 to 2014 from campus and city police departments covering 10 major programs: Auburn, Florida, Florida State, Michigan State, Missouri, Notre Dame, Oklahoma State, Oregon State, Texas A&M and Wisconsin. Some police departments withheld records citing state disclosure laws. (ESPN sued the University of Notre Dame and Michigan State University for not releasing material; both cases are pending on appeal.) And not all information was uniform among jurisdictions.

But available reports showed that Rainey's alma mater, Florida, had the most athletes -- 80 -- named as suspects in more than 100 crimes at Florida. Yet the athletes either never faced charges, had charges against them dropped or were not prosecuted 56 percent of the time. When Outside the Lines examined a comparison set of cases involving college-age males in Gainesville, 28 percent of the crimes ended either without a record of charges being filed or by charges eventually being dropped.

Student/athletes? I'd say more likely cash cows. Interesting that two universities are fighting ESPN's efforts to get to the truth. If a person has enough money, or enough friends with money, then likely there are no consequences. The public backlash against witnesses/victims and

In just a year, the NFL and FIFA scandals have hit and the NCAA has long been a source of strife. But these are "institutions of higher learning" and, not unlike the problem we have with cops, should be held to a higher standard.

So much I could say but I will leave it to ATS to fill out this thread. Most all systems are broken. How can we fix them? Can we fix human behavior? Greed is a part of this but it's also power and how it's wielded and for who's interests.

Lot's to digest. I'll try and come back with some more but I'm curious as to the reactions here.

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

The problem is the very idea of institutions trying to balance the idea of educating students, while
MAKING money. Educating people is not supposed to be a business model. It is a calling. Similar to the way that no one who becomes a doctor for the salary should be allowed within a thousand yards of a medical qualification, those who wish to become fat and rich should not become teachers, professors, or work in education at any level.

Educators should want young people to gain knowledge for its own sake, for the sheer joy of being ABLE to absorb it, and not because that student makes that college or university a metric butt tonne of money. That is not what education is for. Education in this age, should be about giving those who have proven themselves capable, by hard work alone and not donations from parents, of absorbing and using new data to move their understanding forward, the opportunity to absorb as much useful data as possible.

Only by so doing, can the future of the human species be safeguarded against the Idiocracy scenario.

Now, with regard to the situation with universities essentially getting their players out of hot water, in order to continue to milk those individuals as a financial resource... This would not be happening at all if the education system did not have such totally skewed priorities where making money is concerned. But more than that, "liaisons" between campus officials and the state or city law enforcement agencies have FAR too much clout. The position of universities as employers in a state or city, and as centres of financial concentration, should not offer them the opportunity to influence law enforcement in any way what so ever, and yet, by whatever means, the situation is clearly far less than ideal with regard to this specific issue.

But the only way to remove this sort of behaviour from large organisations, and indeed between large organisations, is to remove those who seek to gain any material benefit from their toil, from every post which has ever been compromised. As long as you have a materialist in a position which allows them to have leverage applied to them, then you have a weakness in that position, and it is these weaknesses which get exploited to create the circumstances we see played out in those numbers you offered.

a reply to: TrueBrit

"Far less than ideal". Well, ain't THAT a understatement.

I just wonder if anything will come of this story. It's not news to many of us who have known this type of stuff goes down but now it's out there for all to see. I don't know what, or if anything, can be done. We have gone so far down the path of corruption, in most every way possible, that it seems there is no turning it back. It just rolls on and if you aren't one of the corrupt then you get stomped on.

It's gotten so far beyond sad these days. People actually threatened raping the prosecutor's wife and children in Florida for the Jameis Winston rape accusation. That's how far we have sunk. A athlete means more than most peoples morality, where they will threaten people if the athlete can't play for their beloved team. It's really quite sickening(not that most of what goes on in the world isn't) what is in the article. Victims that are railroaded by police and cannot speak out for fear of retribution from idiot fanatics. Just because someone plays a game doesn't make them a better human being and surely should not be a reason for deifying them and letting them get away with pretty much anything.

When a regular Joe commits the same crime and ends up in prison, yet the same standard isn't applied to some athlete then there is a problem. It's a rampant problem across all area of society, not just sports. Cops are on a rampage throughout this country and politicians and heads of corporations are immune to prosecution for nearly everything.

I wish I had answers but I don't.