A Quick Take on My Lunch Break: Thoughts on the Caleb King Arrest
by T Kyle King on Oct 11, 2010 12:30 PM EDT
in Football
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PrintAdamLilly was the first to post the news here, but by now you know that Caleb King was arrested on a bench warrant for failing to appear in court on a speeding ticket. At the time of his arrest, King was getting ready to drive his brother’s car home; in other words, he wasn’t up to anything nefarious.
Although jujdawg’s take on this initially was mistaken for my position before being recognized as someone else’s viewpoint, I agree with jujdawg. Having overreacted to a previous arrest of Alec Ogletree, I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.
If a guy is a problem child like Quincy Carter, you run him off the reservation. If a guy is a repeat offender like Jasper Sanks, you kick him off the team. If a guy is involved in a serious offense like Michael Lemon, Montez Robinson, or Zach Mettenberger, you kick him off the team. If a guy is arrested for DUI like Dontavius Jackson, you suspend him for half a season and prompt a transfer. If that doesn’t get the message across and another guy is arrested for DUI like Demetre Baker, you kick him off the team.
By the way, those are exactly the actions Mark Richt took in each one of those instances. Signals are being sent, and strongly.
Is it maddening that guys aren’t paying their tickets for minor traffic offenses? Of course it is. Should there be someone in Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall whose job description specifically involves tracking the deadlines for payment of parking tickets and speeding tickets, and any court dates scheduled as a result of such citations? Of course there should, if there is not already.
Speaking as a guy who got a speeding ticket or two, and a parking ticket or twelve, while enrolled at the University of Georgia, though, I don’t think guys need to have their scholarships yanked over sheer stupidity that does not endanger life, limb, or property, or involve moral culpability. This is a half-step above emerging from an alley or misspelling your middle name.
There are offenses worthy of being booted off the team; we know what they are, because they’re the offenses for which Mark Richt boots guys off the team, and has consistently for a decade. Getting clocked going 76 miles per hour on Highway 78 and failing to pay the fine on time is a stadium step offense, not a playing time offense, and certainly not a scholarship stripping offense. It’s embarrassing, but that’s all it is.
Go ‘Dawgs!
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One person should be punished, though.
Lil’ Jeffy Schultz just dropped a 12-pack of eggs all over his editor’s forehead this morning with hits reaction to the story.
Remotely related aside. . . . . .
Noticed a LED light thing on my son’s keyring this weekend advertizing the services of the upstate’s best DUI attorney. Asked Miller where he got it and he said they were giving them out at Tigerama. (My son goes to Clemson.)
Loved it because
1. This DUI attorney is a Georgia alum and big booster
2. The LED light was red.
Go Dawgs.
Tell your son
to be extremely careful driving through downtown at 11pm lest he get a reckless driving ticket the way my nephew did.
I can bake like a demon.
good advice thanks.
He avoid driving down that main street like the plague.(I always go that way coming from our house to CU.) Maybe that is why.
i think your taking it too easy
if this incident happened in isolation i think your exactly right.
but he knew he sped. he knew he had a court date. he knew he missed it. the problem we have right now is that we have a continuous pattern of our players not caring what the law is. all the players know that they are under the microscope now. he still chose to ignore all of this, and then show up to the cops, to get his brother’s car.
not good judgment in a time like this.
should he be kicked off the team? no. Normally this is a one game suspension. I’m thinking it needs to be 2 to send a message. No more screwing around guys.
The county in question doesn't even think it's a big deal.
Caleb wouldn’t get anything more than step-runs at any other school.
And....
At any other school this would not be in the news…..This is the same as the damn AJC blog for UGA that reported when UGA put players on probation recently for offenses that had already been punished. They just wanted to stir the pot up again.
Pointless and baseless…Just like people to blame the coach for this. You should blame him and/or his parents.
by AzzKickerUGA on Oct 12, 2010 11:58 PM EDT up reply actions
So what you are saying is
That he should serve a two game suspension for not paying his traffic ticket on time.?!? It’s not like it wasn’t going to be sent to the highway department resulting in a suspension of his license and a boatload of fines and insurance premium increases to go with it.
And it is Mark Richt’s responsibility to make sure 100+ boys pay there traffic tickets on time, or drive their scooters correctly? The boys need to be responsible for that.
He didn’t beat his girlfriend, he didn’t drive drunk, he didn’t vandalize property.
And he will face a pretty stiff punishment the same as anyother bonehead college boy who can’t see beyond the next 10 minutes.
And he will learn an important lesson. Which is the most important thing if you care about these boys growing into men.
Insurance rates
don’t necessarily go up for said offense. Just sayin’.
No suspension warranted
The kid made a mistake – he has to deal with it. I don’t think he was acting selfishly like most players do when they get themselves into trouble (Carlos Dunlap?). He didn’t harm anyone or put anyone in danger.
I agree that the appropriate punishment is a few gassers or stadium runs.
Urban Meyer thinks that's a bit harsh.
Sorry. I just couldn’t help myself.
As an attorney I was once continually amazed at the lack of understanding of our Court system exhibited by my fellow citizens. I am no longer surprised. I have had too many people tell me that they “never heard anything more about it” so they “assumed it was taken care of.”
Given that Caleb King actually showed up to pick up the car I’d say there’s a 50% or better chance that he did not know anything was amiss. He just assumed everything was taken care of. At a very basic level, one would think that at this point any UGA football player with an inkling that his papers are not in order would go out of his way to avoid the ACCPD. Not as a matter of reasoned logic, but as a matter of tingling in the prefrontal cortex.
That being said, I’d still sit him for a half. As Justin Hall notes above, the context within which this happened makes it inexcusable at this point. Two games is too severe. But if Demetre Baker’s dismissal can be justified at least in part using one of the oldest of parental punishment justifications (“you knew it was wrong because you saw your brother get punished for it”) then Caleb King, who has seen his team brought to grief in public precisely because of this exact offense, should be punished a bit more severely under the same rubric. And that’s before we consider that King himself was arrested as a freshman for driving with a suspended license.
Don't you think he's suffered enough?
Caleb was probably sitting in the holding cell with a bunch of other guys telling each other about how they got arrested for battery, armed robbery, etc. Then they asked Caleb – so what are you in for?
I didn’t pay my parking ticket on time.
No. Because this is the second time he's been arrested for a driving related offense. Last time it was a suspended license.
Again, for a first offense I would say yes. If he were the first (or even the fourth) player on our team picked up for this kind of thing in the past 2 years, I would say yes. But clearly that’s not working.
I don’t know how much stock you put in this, but according to Seth Emerson,
“King told the officer that he had taken care of the problem, according to the police report.”
Maybe he was trying to get out of trouble here, but he may have honestly believed it to have been taken care of. I’d be interested to know more about this statement, personally.
"It'll only be reviewed because the guys up in the booth want to watch it a few times too." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf16_mw0nxs
I am of two minds upon this question.
On the one hand, after all the trouble we’ve had with suspended license issues, a guy ought to know better. On the other hand, even the Walton County authorities say this is no big deal; if he pays the fine, it goes away. In my mind, it would be different if he had been picked up for this while getting in trouble for something else, but he wasn’t. He was going out at 5:00 in the morning to drive his brother’s car home. This falls under the heading of “no good deed goes unpunished.”
On the one hand, college is the last leg of a person’s journey into adulthood, so legal adults between 18 and 22 ought to be responsible for their own actions and the consequences thereof. On the other hand, because the University makes an enormous investment in these guys, there is a special incentive to look over their shoulders. John Eason reportedly calls the players’ professors on a weekly basis to make sure they are going to class and keeping up with their coursework. That’s paternalistic micromanaging, but no one considers it overbearing, or even anything other than prudent, because grades are a prerequisite to eligibility. Given that, is it really so much of a stretch to have someone (maybe even John Eason) keeping up with whether a player has left a parking ticket unpaid that puts him at risk of an arrest?
At the end of the day, while reasonable points are raised all around, Caleb King shouldn’t bear the brunt of everyone’s outrage at what other players have done. It was one thing to drop the hammer on Demtre Baker; Mark Richt’s subsequent comments made it clear that he had made it clear to the players what the consequences of a DUI arrest could be. He made that decision knowing the risk he was running. Caleb King apparently thought his ticket had been dealt with, and he certainly didn’t know he was going to be arrested when he went to pick up his brother’s car. The fact that other guys screwed up similarly in the past shouldn’t result in a disproportionate punishment for Caleb King.
Go 'Dawgs!
Athens Police
No…they were talking about getting pulled over because they had UGA sticker on their car. Athens police are over the top and that needs to be dealt with and addressed.
To much ego and they think they are saving the world. Thanks for holding Caleb and making Clarke County safer from unpaid speeding ticket offenders.
These are the same damn morons who stopped me when I parked where I have always tailgated for 15 years and told me I could not park there. It is not North Campus. I explained the situation and then he told me I did not know what I was talking about. So I told him to wait for the parking attendant manager to show up and we would settle it.
I parked on the grass and setup. He said he was writing me a ticket for 5 different offenses. Then the parking manager shows up and informs him of the situation and that Athens Police should leave their patrons alone.
Did not even get an apology from the dumb ass cop. That is the level of stupidity and ego riding around in Athens policing the city. I am not excusing anyone on the football team from dealing with their issues and taking responsibility but it sure does not help when the cops appear to be out for everyone regardless.
by AzzKickerUGA on Oct 13, 2010 12:04 AM EDT up reply actions
assuming in Georgia his license was suspended when he didn't show up for court
which means it was a good thing he wasn’t driving that night.
Question: Can't you take a web-based driver's training class in Georgia to dismiss traffic tickets?
If so, CK could have sat for 6 hours sometime and had this taken care of. Or attended Comedy Driving school, etc. if you have those there. A lot cheaper than paying $150+ for a typical speeding ticket.
Or did he think someone did the test for him (oops!)…? Either way, this should be handled internally and does not justify missing gametime unless there is far more to this story.
Run Lindsay Run!
Hey, look. I found Caleb King's to-do list this week.
by opsomath on Oct 11, 2010 1:54 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs
And that takes up all 10 spots of his to do list it looks like
I saw we suspend every player from practice until they have paid or showed up for thier traffic court appearance. Cause otherwise they won’t get these stupid license and traffic incidents taken care of.
Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.
I Corinthians 9:24
by Southern Dawg on Oct 11, 2010 2:53 PM EDT up reply actions
This development has literally caused me to not sleep.
And I’ve sat here trying to think of something uplifting/poignant/semi-intelligent to say. And all I can come up with is: SH**!
If you're gonna do it, go ugly early.
On one point, I vehemently disagree
Should there be someone in Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall whose job description specifically involves tracking the deadlines for payment of parking tickets and speeding tickets, and any court dates scheduled as a result of such citations? Of course there should, if there is not already.
Caleb King is 22. Old enough to fight in a war, drink a beer, etc. Neither he, nor anyone else on this team, needs more babysitting in Butts-Mehre. Learn to manage your own affairs. Or don’t and suffer the consequences. Coddling only delays the inevitable point at which these young men will learn this lesson the hard way. The later in life you elect to learn these lessons, the more you have at stake.
Rather than DMV nannying, Richt would be better served to assign that head count to strength and conditioning.
SEC Pigskin Podcast with Barney Able and Dorsey Hill
http://www.secpigskinpodcast.com/
This point stems from a long discussion on this board
about tracking players insurance, registration and license dates. It is Mr King’s responsibility to get up on the correct morning, procure transportation and/or representation, and pay his fine. But being aware of pending legal issues benefits the staff much more than the players so they don’t get bit in the but at 3 in the morning over something. It is not coddling. Providing prove of legal documentation to drive happens 100% in the military, many, many businesses do it to start a job, many places do it to procure a parking pass.
Look at the blogs, look at the school, look at the impact to the team and then tell me it is just up to the player. There are many people affected, and simply creating a spreadsheet to track driving related items and offenses and having the staff be aware of them is not coddling. It protects the staff, the team, the school. The student/player still has to take care of their business. Furthermore, like so many, I can assure you getting some sort of parking/driving fine in Athens is about as easy as breathing, and required this alum a lot of brain cells to figure out the system.
"One thing I will never do as long as I’m at Georgia is lose to Florida." - Herschel Walker
As a four-year resident of Athens, I want to be sympathetic. I really do.
But I’ve lived in half a dozen other cities, and I haven’t found the process of keeping a clean driving record to be noticeably harder or easier anywhere else than it is in Athens. I cannot reconcile why no other program has this problem and yet it is our most prolific issue and only becomes moreso as we devote more attention to it. Also, King’s most recent violation did not occur in Athens.
I get that this has an impact on people besides King. But it’s a paperwork issue — not a DUI, not felonious assault or any of the other sins that would really cost this team. Realistically, at most programs he wouldn’t have to sit a quarter for something so minor.
SEC Pigskin Podcast with Barney Able and Dorsey Hill
http://www.secpigskinpodcast.com/
by aproposdenada on Oct 11, 2010 4:33 PM EDT up reply actions
Should we also get rid of the money spent on player tutoring?
After all, it’s ultimately their responsibility to attend/pass classes, right? Should we get rid of Rex Bradbury, the team nutritionist? After all, a 22 year old athlete is old enough to know that a diet of Big Macs and chocolate milkshakes is not conducive to top performance. If the athletic association stopped doing things for players that they should know to do for themselves Butts-Mehre would be 2/3 empty.
I don’t disagree with you that it seems paternalistic and pathetic that an environment has emerged in which such an idea gains serious traction. But I do think there’s a bit of a logical hole in the argument.
Good points, MaconDawg.
There’s a popular T-shirt out there that says “I’ll try being nicer if you’ll try being smarter.”
I use a paraphrase of that slogan with my libertarian friends: “I’ll stop being paternalistic if you’ll stop being childish.”
Go 'Dawgs!
TKK, leave us poor libertarians alone.
If only we ran the constitutionality of laws through you first, we could find out what liberties are worth sacrificing for which paternalistic approaches without wasting so much time and money in the court system. Why didn’t I think of this earlier?
“I’ll stop complaining about your big government ideas, if you’ll stop complaining about mine.”
The Pillar of Pessimism, the Narrator of Negativity, and the Dictator of Doubt is here to rain on your Utopian Parade.
Nothing personal, VDawg; it was just an example.
For the record, I’m as strict a constructionist as you’ll find, and I have the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy essay to prove it.
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on Oct 11, 2010 11:10 PM EDT up reply actions
Impressive. I accessed the rest through Lexis Nexis.
Thanks TKK. I meant for that to be a humorous reply, but it sounds more like I’m angry. Too much time on political message boards and comment threads makes me a little quick to utilize my ambidextrous freedom-loving defense mechanisms.
The Booyah quote of the day: “Given that the power of judicial review is not delegated to the national government, it must be prohibited; given that the power of nullification is not prohibited to the States, it must be reserved. Really, this is not a complex business.” – T Kyle King
A to the men brother.
GO DAWGS!!
The Pillar of Pessimism, the Narrator of Negativity, and the Dictator of Doubt is here to rain on your Utopian Parade.
By the way, . . .
. . . I cannot confirm this, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only person ever to have quoted Sinead O’Connor in a law review article! :)
Go 'Dawgs!
does that mean other authors don’t Compare 2 U?
"It'll only be reviewed because the guys up in the booth want to watch it a few times too." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf16_mw0nxs
That means two things: 1) Nothing Compares to TKK, and...
2) never argue with a man versed in both constitutional law and Sinead O’Connor. It’s a recipe for disaster.
The Pillar of Pessimism, the Narrator of Negativity, and the Dictator of Doubt is here to rain on your Utopian Parade.
I see where you're going, but I don't buy the parallel.
Bradbury’s job is about more than keeping these guys off Big Macs. Designing the nutritional regimen necessary to perform optimally as a D-1 athlete is a reasonably sophisticated thing. Keeping your ride street legal? Not so much. You don’t need someone with a JD — or any degree — to help you figure that out.
And tutoring is something that is available to all students, not just students, which suggests it’s a pretty important function at UGA. Do we need DMV nannies for all students as well?
I’ll argue that point another way: UGA is a top 20 public university. It stands to reason that some of its academic offerings might be rigorous enough to necessitate tutors, particularly for students who spend half their waking hours on athletics. I fail to see how the process of keeping one’s driving record clean could be deemed to be anywhere near as rigorous.
SEC Pigskin Podcast with Barney Able and Dorsey Hill
http://www.secpigskinpodcast.com/
by aproposdenada on Oct 11, 2010 4:46 PM EDT up reply actions
Ugh, typo
Second graf should read, “And tutoring is something that is available to all students, not just athletes …”
SEC Pigskin Podcast with Barney Able and Dorsey Hill
http://www.secpigskinpodcast.com/
by aproposdenada on Oct 11, 2010 4:47 PM EDT up reply actions
According to the ABH's story
The court date was Aug. 6, which was the Friday of the first week of fall practice. Not an excuse, but King probably had not much besides football on his mind at that point.
Also, I never skipped a court date, so I don’t really know, but how much effort do counties make to serve these warrants? Given the general reaction of the department itself, it certainly doesn’t sound like they’re knocking down any doors. Is it possible that King had an old address on his license and that they sent a letter to that address, where he never got it?
My understanding
is that bench warrants are not something that anybody goes out to serve, but if you get dinged for something else and it comes up, then you have this issue.
This happened to a friend of mine when he mistakenly missed a court date. Apparently in Morgan County, they don’t put out the bench warrant. They send a letter to the address on your driver’s license, saying the fine is doubled and if you don’t pay it within X days, you get the warrant and a suspended license.
I think the issue here is most people see “arrest” (especially with our last year or so) and flip out. The guy screwed up, sure, but it’s not like he threw a stolen laptop out the window. Or even had too much to drink. He got a speeding ticket and forgot to pay it. Dumb, deserves some stadium steps for making us look bad, but that’s about it.
You encapsulated my take and my opinion on this completely.
1) As pathetic as it is, UGA needs an employee whose job it is to run every single football (and maybe basketball) player’s drivers license if not every day at least once a week. Then also have a system in place where you can run their name/SS# to find out about any bench warrants. Then once these are known about, they can be taken care of appropriately and in a timely fashion rather than pop up at unexpected moments.
2) Mull over this scary thought: as many players get randomly busted for stuff like this, imagine how many more have bench warrants and such but just haven’t been in a situation where their ID was run to get them caught. WTF is up with these guys?
3) There needs to be some kind of serious lesson taught to these kids about how and why to pay fines. Again, pathetic, but apparently necessary.
4) This doesn’t pertain to C. King’ situation, but some politician needs to get on board with dialing back the overzealousness of the ACC police.
All of these points are exactly in line with the discussion of "Czar of discipline" for athletes at UGA.
All players must show their license, registration and insurance and that data can be tracked easily. Court dates and fines can then be added as necessary.
The Czar “staff” can do some 15 minute classes on parking, fines, etc, which most of the school would need as well.
The Czar can work with the ACCPD to help create better relations. They are clearly going overboard at times.
The Czar can monitor other schools and the NCAA to see what is “fair” in terms of discipline to make recommendations to the coaches.
This helps in many avenues. My original intent of this was to get it off the Coaches plates so they can focus on their sports, as well as insure standards and guidelines are met. The coaches would always have final say.
"One thing I will never do as long as I’m at Georgia is lose to Florida." - Herschel Walker
just curious
Wouldn’t the job muckbeast was describing fall
under the purview of eligibility/compliance? Part
of screening for eligibility should be a background
check that would reveal any outstanding violations
or situations that needed to be dealt with. It’s a fact
of life for many of us who have professions. We are,
in essence, asking these players to represent the
University. Anyone else working there would be
checked out. Yeah, I know…they don’t get “paid”.
What’s a scholarship, then? I would’ve seriously
appreciated one of those during my UGA education.
by please before I die, Falcons on Oct 11, 2010 5:25 PM EDT reply actions
3 points
1. Pray for the return of the days of Dean Tate.
2’. A pox on the house of Jan Kemp.
3. Some of you guys maybe should try Jon Stewart & Steven Colbert a couple of nights a week & give yourselves a rest from Sean Hannity & Nancy Grace
by jujdawg on Oct 11, 2010 5:31 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs
Why did the cops
run his driver’s license in the first place? He was just there to drive a vehicle home. Seems the cops were fishing again.
"To hell with them fellas....buzzard's gotta eat same as a worm."
Liability/PR issue.
Imagine if they turned the keys over to someone without checking, that person caused a fiery highway collision, and it came out afterwards that he never even had a valid driver’s license.
Lawyers. We runnin’ stuff.
/and yeah, you’re right, if you give the Athens police any excuse to check you out they most assuredly will.
I picked up the car from a friend
who was arrested after being pulled over. The police may have glanced at my license, but they surely didn’t run it. This was just a couple of years ago in Athens.
King obviously was irresponsible to let himself get in that situation, but it makes you wonder if it would have been different if it were Shaun Chapas who went to pick up his buddy’s car.
As I said before...
… I almost never bring up this issue, because it’s almost always overblown. This time, though, it certainly does sound like a DWB to me.
by vineyarddawg on Oct 11, 2010 9:54 PM EDT up reply actions
"Driving while black."
The 1986 C. Thomas Howell classic “Soul Man” provides an illustrative example.
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on Oct 11, 2010 10:14 PM EDT up reply actions
Soul Man
Funny movie, at least back in the day.
My friend Mark? A black negro??? Why didn’t he tell me!!?!?!
and I was going to say “Shaun Chapas?!?, why? do they discriminate against leaner guys?”
Holy crap!
I haven’t seen that movie in 20+ years!
But gracias!
If you're gonna do it, go ugly early.
by Inteljumper on Oct 12, 2010 12:17 AM EDT up reply actions
A question...
I’m sure a suspension is all but done in this matter. But I wonder if the sentiment would be different towards King (and Richt) if we had lost to Tennessee?
"If we score, we may win. If they never score, we'll never lose."
-Erk Russell
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