Sports Illustrated and CBS just concluded a six month investigation of NCAA College Football players with criminal records. In all, they conducted background checks on the 2,837 players that were on the 2010 rosters of SI’s Preseason Top 25 poll.
What they found was pretty alarming, especially considering that most of these kids have just reached adult age. That is an important fact because they were not privy to any juvenile records. In all, they found that 277 (7%) athletes had been charged and, or convicted of criminal activity. They concluded that 40% had been involved in “serious crimes”.
My initial reaction is that there is no way they could have done an exhaustive search and uncovered every crime. Not only that, but again, they didn’t have access to juvenile records. Can you imagine what they would have found if this information was included? Now, the second thought is it appears that they only identified charges, not convictions. So certainly the number of convictions would be less than those charged.
Pretty interesting study though. I’m sure they found nothing on my beloved Ohio State Buckeyes:)
Check out the full story as well as the video above. I imagine this might cause a bit of an image problem for the NCAA.
[...] might recall a story we posted last month about a Sports Illustrated/CNN poll that found 7% of all players on the roster of NCAA Football’s Top 25 list had been charged [...]