SI and CBS's Exposé on Crime and College Football Ultimately Has a Small Point to Make

by Year2 on Mar 2, 2026 10:10 AM EST in SEC Football

SI and CBS News teamed up on an exposé regarding college football and the arrest records of those who play it. You should read the whole thing to get every point in context, but after finishing it, I'm wondering what the big deal was. Or, at least, why the article was structured the way it was.

What the organizations did was look into the backgrounds of every player on every roster from SI's 2010 preseason top 25 and figure out how many have arrest records. It found that seven percent of total players and 8.1 percent of scholarship players had arrest records.

To be clear, some of the other revelations from that study were eye popping. Pitt's 22 players with arrest records jumps off the page, for instance. Around 40 percent of the indicents included serious charges. The organizations couldn't get access to juvenile records for 80 percent of the players in the study, so the actual figures could be higher.

However, this is nothing that anyone who follows the Fulmer Cup or simply the off season news wire didn't already know. College football players get in trouble. That some of them got in trouble before college is also not news when you consider that a nontrivial percentage of football players come from low a socioeconomic status, where arrests are more common than in the general population.

Ultimately when you get past the initial flurry of numbers, it appears that the point of the article is to point out that few schools run formal criminal background checks on players. The obvious cautionary tale that the article somehow missed is Willie Williams (and really, what is he not a cautionary tale for?), who was pursued by many high profile schools until it was revealed that he was arrested nearly a dozen times by the end of high school. Several suitors backed off him after that.

But even if schools did do more rigorous study of players' backgrounds, how much would actually change? The obvious bad apples like Williams wouldn't get a sniff from image conscious schools anymore, but someone would take them, just like Miami and later Louisville had no problem bringing Williams aboard. Plus the article even points out that giving people a second chance is not necessarily a bad thing, and all coaches have success stories where they helped turn the life of a troubled soul around.

It's important to restate that the demographics of college football players don't line up at all with the general population or the population of all college students. To do a more thorough study, the organizations would have needed to figure out the socioeconomic backgrounds of each of the players in the study and compare it to a proportional sample of the college student population. If the arrest percentages between those two were not similar, then we'd have a real story. Who knows if all that data is available, though.

Besides, players with troubled backgrounds usually end up at schools outside the sample that SI and CBS News looked at, and the organizations didn't bother to throw out from their overall numbers the arrest records where the charges themselves got thrown out. Being arrested and exonerated is much different than being arrested and having to pay a price.

Sometimes you have to quantify a problem before it will be solved, but ultimately it's a lot of noise just to say that most schools don't do criminal background checks on their athletes. But as I said before, even if they did, how much would actually change?

UPDATE

Matt Hinton actually did take a look at some arrest statistics for a point of comparison. Good for him.

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Comments

I can see the logic,

in doing a report like this. But it leaves me feeling uneasy. Eight percent would honestly seem like average for the total college student population (or maybe I didn’t hang with the best crowd). Also, arrests and convictions are two separate things. There are more than a handful of officers that are stricter on student-athletes, as well as officers that let minor violations walk because you had 135 yds/rushing in the past game.

In the end, I have trouble seeing this as a real issue—especially when isolated to only student-athletes.

by Pecan on Mar 2, 2026 10:30 AM EST reply actions

I’m pretty sure that eight percent is higher than the overall college population when it comes to actual arrests.

When it comes to doing things that would earn an arrest if caught, eight percent is quite low. Underage drinking and pot are rampant at colleges, not to mention fights that could earn people battery charges that don’t happen in front of police. I’d imagine that, sadly, DUI happens far more often than college students get arrested for it too.

Battery of women, weapons charges, burglary, hard drugs, and the like are the things to be really concerned about. The stuff in the previous paragraph are relatively common among college students whether they’re athletes or not.

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by Year2 on Mar 2, 2026 10:43 AM EST up reply actions

Agreed

Eight percent is probably too high to count the people who did NOT commit an arrestable offense in college, whether Minor in Possession, experimenting, etc.

I can see where this is an issue, but feel it is broader than just student-athletes. It is indicative of young’ns, their tempers, and lack of foresight to consequences. Also, statistics can be skewed and headlines can be misleading. You’re more involved in journalism than I, and surely know the appeal of “grabbing” or “scaring” people for the effect of ratings/viewership.

In the end, guess I am just not surprised by this news.

by Pecan on Mar 2, 2026 11:05 AM EST up reply actions

I wouldn’t call myself a journalist as I’ve got no training in it; cocknfire, however, is a J-school grad. However as a media connoisseur of sorts, yeah, this article was structured with maximum eye catching in mind.

After all, what’s the only change the article recommends? That more schools should do background checks on their players. All they had to do to make that point was call up someone in each school’s athletics department and report that only two of their 25 surveyed schools do it. There’s no way that’s how they started on this study though.

My guess is that they decided to look at player arrests to make some kind of point about how often college football players get arrested. However like I pointed out, the raw numbers from their study are somewhat empty without context of arrest rates for overall college students and/or a sample of college students with similar socioeconomic backgrounds as what the players had.

Without a valid comparison point, they can’t make a real firm conclusion about the arrest rates themselves. Plus, they can’t make a blanket statement of “schools shouldn’t give scholarships to players with arrest records” because it’s obviously a stupid thing to say and could easy be spun as them being anti-poor.

So, what’s the one thing they can recommend that might actually change? That more schools do background checks. However since they spent all that time and energy, they might as well publish their arrest record research and get some pageviews from it. I’ve done the same thing (though with far less weighty of issues), where I’ve done lots of research only to end up with a weak conclusion. You better believe I still posted what I spent all that time on despite it having little to do with the final point.

Team Speed Kills -- SBNation's SEC Blog
If you're so inclined, follow me @Year2

by Year2 on Mar 2, 2026 11:24 AM EST up reply actions

Nice logic

That’s why I belive you are far more versed in the world of “eye-catching journalism” than I. Spencer Hall makes a lot of the same points over on his site, and I agree with the both of you. I just still do not see the purpose of this “expose”, without further devulging their methods and creating a baseline to compare to other groups. I was a criminology undergrad at UF, and understand the difficulty in researching crimes—especially throughout multiple jurisdictions. That being said, I guess I need to try to see this as more of an opinion piece than passing for definite statistics that could be used to spur any change.

Also, the background checks (especially for juvenile records) are a touchy subject. You are correct that this could spin into a socio-economic/racial issue very quickly, with punishing “kids” for prior transgressions (of which they have likely already resolved).

You summed up what I was trying to say, but (and don’t sell youself short here) are better at expressing yourself through the written word than I. Y’all two keep it up, especially the baseball pieces. It is difficult to get even minimal info elsewhere.

by Pecan on Mar 2, 2026 11:58 AM EST up reply actions