The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football

by Jeff Benedict

  After the visit Bruggman talked to his parents. He told them he was leaning heavily toward WSU. They thought that was wise.

  The SEC leads the nation

  Samuel Jurgens had a sunny disposition. The twenty-year-old history major loved being a student at Alabama. He especially revered ’Bama football. A month after the Crimson Tide won its third national title in four years by manhandling Notre Dame, Jurgens left a friend’s dorm and headed toward home on the other end of the Tuscaloosa campus. It was just past midnight on February 11, 2013. Walking swiftly, Jurgens had on headphones and a backpack over his jacket when he came upon an African-American man wearing a red beanie and a navy-blue jacket. As Jurgens passed him on the sidewalk, he noticed the guy was saying something. He quickly removed his headphones.

  “Hey, do you have a lighter?” the man asked.

  “I don’t smoke. I’m sorry.” Jurgens put his headphones back on and resumed walking. After a few more strides, out of the corner of his eye he saw a second man approaching from an adjacent parking lot. He was big and burly and was wearing a raincoat and jeans. Again, Jurgens removed his headphones.

  “Do you have a lighter?” the larger man asked.

  Jurgens thought the situation was odd. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t smoke.”

  He put his headphones back on and took a few more steps, unaware that a third man had come up behind him. The next thing Jurgens knew he was on the ground, fading in and out of consciousness, unsure how long he’d been there. His lip was split open. His left eye was swollen shut, and the entire left side of his face was numb, bruised and enlarged. He’d been struck with such force that he was knocked unconscious. Then he was kicked in the back and chest. But he had also sustained a concussion and had no memory of the attack when he came to on the sidewalk. All he knew was that his jacket and headphones were drenched in blood. The men were gone. So were his glasses and his backpack containing his Apple MacBook Pro.

  Dazed and struggling to see, Jurgens used his cell phone to call his friend. “Something bad has happened to me,” he told him.

  Moments later, his friend found him and led him back inside the dorm. The police were called, and Jurgens, still confused and disoriented, was taken to the ER.

  An hour later, another Alabama student—Caleb Paul, a civil and construction engineering major—encountered the same trio along Seventh Avenue, near the UA Energy, Mineral and Material Science Research Building. Two of the men looked on from a dark-colored SUV while one of them approached Paul and asked him for a light. Then Paul was punched in the head and face and knocked to the ground before his wallet was stolen.

  The University of Alabama police promptly issued an advisory reporting two robberies. Physical descriptions of the suspects were posted on the campus police Web site.

  By 5:00 on Monday, Sam Jurgens had finally been released from the hospital. His parents had driven from Birmingham to retrieve him. They took him back home to rest and recover. But hours after they arrived back in Birmingham, Jurgens received a call from the University of Alabama police. They informed him that the suspects were in custody and would be held overnight in the local jail. The police wanted Jurgens to return to Tuscaloosa right away to sign an affidavit. Jurgens’s parents wanted him to spend a few days in bed before traveling.

  “Is this that big of a priority?” Jurgens asked the police.

  “Normally, no. But in this case, yes,” an officer told him. “This is a high-priority case.”

  Jurgens asked if the assailants were on the FBI Most Wanted list or something of that nature.

  “No,” an officer told him. “They are football players.”

  The three men who had attacked Jurgens and Paul the previous night were on Alabama’s championship team:

  D. J. Pettway, twenty, a six-foot-three, 270-pound redshirt freshman

  Tyler Hayes, eighteen, a six-foot-two, 210-pound linebacker

  Eddie Williams, twenty, a six-foot-three, 200-pound safety

  All three were booked on two counts of robbery and jailed.

  Williams, it turned out, was already in trouble. The day before the robberies he had gotten into a dispute with a BP gas attendant, who reported that Williams had become erratic and was “threatening that he had something in the trunk of his vehicle.” The Tuscaloosa police later stopped Williams in a Honda Accord and frisked him. He had a gun on him and was charged with carrying a concealed weapon without a license and released on bond.

  A fourth player, twenty-year-old running back Brent Calloway, had no role in the robberies. But he was charged for knowingly using a stolen debit card taken from Caleb Paul’s wallet. Calloway had previously been arrested during his freshman year when police discovered marijuana stuffed in his sock after they had stopped him for driving without his lights. That case was disposed through a plea agreement.

  Nick Saban was relaxing with his wife at their new beach home near Naples, Florida, when his phone rang. It was his director of football operations, Joe Pannunzio. Days earlier, Alabama’s recruiting class had just been rated tops in the country. Saban was finally taking a moment to get away from football and exhale. But Pannunzio made it clear that this wasn’t that moment. He briefed Saban on the situation back in Tuscaloosa.

  The arrests called for a quick response. Saban decided to start by indefinitely suspending all four players until he had more information.

  By morning all four players had been released on bail. Later that day, Saban issued a prepared statement. “Their actions do not reflect the spirit and character that we want our organization to reflect,” he said. “It’s obviously very disappointing and unacceptable what happened.”

  Meanwhile, Hayes and Williams promptly confessed to the robberies, and Calloway confessed to knowingly using a stolen debit card.

  But back in Naples, Saban was fuming. He had little patience for players who failed to appreciate the privilege of playing college football at Alabama and the responsibility that it entails. Lawlessness went against everything he tried to instill in his team. Worse, this wasn’t the first time he had faced this issue at Alabama. When he took over the program in 2007, the team had a rash of off-the-field problems and disciplinary issues. In his first fourteen months on the job, eight players were arrested, including five for disorderly conduct. A total of thirty games were missed due to player suspensions.

  Since that rocky period, Saban’s team had gone nearly five years without any serious off-the-field issues. But suddenly he faced the situation again. Only this time Alabama was the reigning national champion, making the spotlight much brighter. After a brief respite in Naples, he returned to Tuscaloosa and spoke to the players, their parents and members of the university about the situation. “People were asking me, ‘What are you going to do to help these guys?’ ” Saban said. “Others were looking at me and saying, ‘What are you going to do to punish these guys?’ ”

  Ultimately, Saban called a team meeting and conveyed a direct message. “I told my team, I can’t help you when you do something criminal,” Saban said.

  After a two-week internal review by the university’s judicial affairs committee, the four players had their scholarships revoked, and Saban permanently removed them from the team. At that point, the court process was just getting started, and none of the players had been convicted of anything. But as far as Saban was concerned, they had violated team rules, and that was sufficient to remove them from the program.

  “I’ve had players get out of what they did,” Saban said. “But I know they did it, and I still kicked them off the team. With me, it’s not whether you’re guilty or not guilty.”

  While unfortunate, the robberies provided an opportunity for Saban to send an important message to his team. “No matter how pretty the garden,” Saban said, “pruning is part of making things healthier. Sometimes you have to have problems to make people understand.”

  But Sam Jurgens and his family might not ever understand. The Jurgenses had family roots in Tuscaloosa stretc
hing back five generations to 1840. Their ties to the university were deep. And Sam and his father had bonded by rooting for Alabama football. “Football in the South is like a civil religion,” Jurgens said. “A lot of people are very passionate about it and value it in ways not much different than religious congregations.”

  The beating Jurgens took at the hands of Alabama football players certainly caused him to reconsider how much of an Alabama football fan he’d be in the future. But more troubling was the fact that he never heard one word of apology or concern from anyone associated with the program. “The university has been very supportive and reimbursed me for all of my losses and expenses,” Jurgens said. “But members of the football team sent me to the hospital and robbed me. But I’ve had no one from the football team—not a coach or anything—approach me.”

  In the second week of April 2013—two months after the incident—Jurgens approached Alabama’s dean of student affairs and expressed a desire to speak to Coach Saban about his ordeal. “I still identify myself as an Alabama football fan,” Jurgens said. “I had so much fun with my father with it over the years. But no one should have to go through what I went through.”

  Despite his ordeal, Jurgens said the athletic department informed him that no one from the football coaching staff would meet with him.

  The arrests of four Alabama players after the 2012 season were indicative of a general problem that every BCS program confronts these days—student-athletes running afoul of the law. Research conducted for this book found that 197 players on BCS teams were arrested in 2012. That’s an average of 16 arrests per month. The SEC had the most arrests with 42, followed by 37 in the Big 12. Arkansas and Missouri led the nation in player arrests; both programs saw 8 players arrested in 2012.

  Fewer than 25 percent of the 197 players who ran afoul of the law in 2012 were kicked off their respective teams. But virtually every player who was arrested more than once was dismissed or suspended. There was only one exception—Florida State’s star running back James Wilder Jr. Despite being arrested three times in 2012, he was not held out of any games. His first arrest occurred in February outside his girlfriend’s apartment. Police were there to arrest her. But Wilder intervened and was charged with battery against a police officer—a felony. Florida State’s head coach, Jimbo Fisher, indefinitely suspended him. But in early April, Wilder pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor—resisting an officer without violence. He was put on six months’ probation and required to take anger management classes. The same day that Wilder entered his plea, Fisher reinstated him to the team, enabling him to play in the spring game.

  “The punishment for misdemeanor offenses for student-athletes at Florida State rests with the head coach,” said Rob Wilson, associate athletic director for communications at FSU. “However, no student-athlete can represent the university until any jail time related to a misdemeanor is completed. A felony offense means immediate suspension for any FSU student-athlete. So Mr. Wilder’s punishment has been and is in the hands of the football coach at this time.”

  Over the summer, however, Wilder spent eleven days in jail after pleading no contest to violating his probation. His arrest was triggered when he registered a 0.01 blood-alcohol level while taking a court-mandated Breathalyzer test. Prosecutors had also accused him of failing to complete his anger management courses. Again, Wilder was indefinitely suspended from the team. But upon his release from jail he was reinstated to the team, clearing the way for him to play in all the team’s games during the 2012 season. He rushed for eleven touchdowns. Then, after the Orange Bowl, he was arrested a third time—this time for failure to appear. In January 2013 he pleaded no contest to driving without a license.

  Individual criminal acts by student-athletes are one thing. But the way institutions respond to allegations against student-athletes can sometimes be even more disturbing.

  On August 31, 2010, Lizzy Seeberg, a nineteen-year-old freshman at St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, went with a girlfriend to hang out with a couple guys they had met the previous night. Both men were Notre Dame students; one of them was a starter on the football team. The two couples ended up in the football player’s dorm, where they had a couple beers. At one point, Seeberg was alone with the football player in his room. The following day she met with a rape counselor, a sexual assault nurse and the Notre Dame campus police and reported that while they were alone, the football player had torn her shirt off and sucked and groped her breasts before trying to forcibly remove her pants. In the midst of the encounter the player was distracted by a text message from his friend. The two of them had been texting back and forth throughout the evening, including during the brief interlude while Seeberg was in the football player’s room. But after the latest text, the student-athlete backed off, and Seeberg was able to leave without further incident.

  Two days after reporting all of this to the authorities, Seeberg received an ominous text message from the accused player’s friend: “Don’t do anything you would regret. Messing with notre dame football is a bad idea.”

  Scared, Seeberg immediately forwarded the text to the Notre Dame police. Under Indiana law, harassment is a crime when “a person who, with intent to harass, annoy, or alarm another person but with no intent of legitimate communication … uses a computer network or other form of communication.”

  On the morning of September 10, Seeberg met again with her counselor and expressed embarrassment over the sexual assault. She also reported feeling vulnerable and anxious over the prospect of pressing charges. After providing reassurances, the counselor nonetheless asked Seeberg to return to the office that afternoon for a follow-up session. But Seeberg never made it back. That afternoon she was found dead in her dorm room. She had taken a lethal dose of medication prescribed for depression and anxiety.

  By that time, ten days had passed since the alleged assault, and Notre Dame police still had not talked to the accused player. Nor had the authorities requested the text messages between the student-athlete and his friend on the night in question. And no action had been taken over the threatening text message sent to Seeberg. Concerned about the quality and integrity of the investigation, her father, Tom Seeberg, wrote to Father Tom Doyle, Notre Dame’s vice president for student affairs. Seeberg also met directly with Notre Dame police.

  But his requests for a thorough, transparent investigation fell on deaf ears. Frustrated, Seeberg retained former U.S. attorney Zachary Fardon. A decorated Chicago prosecutor, Fardon conducted his own investigation. He e-mailed a letter to Father Doyle detailing evidence that Fardon felt Notre Dame had overlooked, such as communications between the student-athlete and his friend that suggested the sexual encounter with Seeberg was part of a premeditated plan.

  Doyle, however, declined to read the letter.

  “When I opened your attachment,” Doyle wrote back, “I could see immediately that significant portions of your letter contained information about the case. When I recognized this I stopped reading.”

  Doyle also declined to forward the letter to Father John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame. “Reading your letters could impair his objectivity as protector of process and potential court of appeal.”

  Fardon fired back: “Father, I respectfully suggest that concern over not wanting to know the specific facts so that you and Father Jenkins can remain objective is misplaced. It is past time for the University to show leadership here. And it is precisely because you are in decision making positions that you should have access to all of the facts.”

  In the end, no charges were filed. Notre Dame police forwarded the results of their investigation to the St. Joseph County prosecutor, Michael Dvorak, for review. He declined to file sexual battery charges, insisting that since Ms. Seeberg was no longer alive to testify, her police statement would be inadmissible as hearsay. “Only Ms. Seeberg and the student-athlete were present during the alleged battery,” Dvorak said. “Conflicts exist between the witnesses’ accounts of the events given to the pol
ice.”

  Dvorak also declined to prosecute the player’s friend for harassment. “The content of the text messages sent does not rise to the level of a criminal act as defined by Indiana’s Harassment statute,” Dvorak said. “The student subjectively believed Ms. Seeberg’s complaint was false and therefore he had a legitimate purpose for his text messages.”

  Devastated, the Seeberg family nonetheless appealed again to Notre Dame in hopes of having their daughter’s complaint adjudicated through the university’s internal judicial process. But they were told that they did not have standing to pursue a case. The accused player, meanwhile, played through the season. It got to the point where Tom Seeberg could not watch Notre Dame games on television.

  “We just wanted a disciplinary proceeding,” Seeberg said. “We wanted an investigation of the truth.”

  Meanwhile, when Notre Dame officials suspected that linebacker Manti Te’o might have been the victim of an online prank, the university hired private investigators and moved heaven and earth to get to the bottom of the so-called hoax.

  The see-no-evil standard set in South Bend paled in comparison to the widespread institutional cover-up at Penn State. In June 2012, former Nittany Lions defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was convicted of forty-five counts of serial sexual abuse of ten young boys dating back to the late 1990s. He was sentenced to no less than thirty years in prison. But the most infuriating aspects of Sandusky’s case were the actions—or, worse, inactions—taken by legendary Penn State coach Joe Paterno and top officials at the school to bury decades of abuse.

  When news of the Sandusky scandal broke in November 2011, Paterno was viewed as a paragon of virtue across the sporting landscape, nothing less than the conscience of college football. The author of the so-called Grand Experiment, Paterno preached that a powerhouse football program could be built on the cornerstones of athletics and academics. He had a record of success to prove it. His teams maintained a 90 percent graduation rate while winning two national titles and racking up 409 wins, giving Paterno the most wins among Division I coaches. And during his forty-six years of coaching Penn State, the university had no major NCAA violations, undoubtedly another record.