College Football's "Bad News Season"

If you visited any of the major sports news outlets online in recent weeks, you noticed that college football has been dominated by stories about players getting into trouble this offseason. During the period following the end of the season and before the start of spring practices there seems to be a significant increase in arrests and suspensions given out to players. There is no denying the correlation between the freedom these players have and the amount of trouble they have gotten into.

The first, and perhaps most notable, story to come out was the indefinite suspension of projected starting quarterback Ryan Perriloux of the defending NCAA champion LSU Tigers. Perriloux has been in trouble ever since he stepped foot on campus. If it weren't for Perriloux's immense talent, one would have to guess Les Miles would have kicked him off the team some time ago. If Perriloux is the starter in week 1 next season, Miles will have made a loud and clear statement about how he feels about off the field issues on his team.

More recently, Indiana's star QB Kellen Lewis was suspended indefinitely for breaking team rules. This will not bode well for Bill Lynch's bid to build off last season's bowl berth. In addition, just this week a Rutgers DT was arrested for undisclosed reasons, while at Nebraska an offensive linemen was arrested for 1st degree sexual assault.

These tidbits, along with other injuries that occur during this time of the season, has prompted "Big Red Network" writer Steve Hanway to coin this time of the year "Bad News Season." How right he is. At this time of the year if your college football team is staying out of the news, it's more than likely a good thing. The challenge for college coaches will be to keep their athletes out of trouble during the offseason as well as they do during the season. This may mean more structured team activities, early scheduling of classes, or more "optional" workouts.