Texas' Reputation Suffering

By Ryan Killian
Daily Texan Columnist

You have the right to remain silent when asked whether or not you attend the University of Texas.
Good thing too, because you wouldn’t want to be considered guilty by association.
Sergio Kindle, Henry Melton, Tyrell Gatewood, James Henry, Andre Jones and Robert Joseph have all sat in the wrong end of a cop car since the summer, and two of those arrests happened this month.
Even Texas legends are getting arrested. Peter Gardere, the only Longhorns quarterback to beat Oklahoma four times was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving on Sept. 13.
People are noticing, and it’s not just Aggies and Okies.
Why couldn't the Longhorn get into a huddle on the football field? It's a parole violation to associate with known felons.
I came across that joke and a slew of others on a blog this week.
If Texas players were keeping it simple and getting arrested for the regular college kid stuff, I’d pretty much shrug it off. But two of these arrests are for felony charges.
Instead, according to an arrest warrant, we’ve got James Henry going into someone’s’ apartment yelling, “who narked on us?”
Then he got down to business. The warrant says he kicked the witness “6-7 times in the head, punched him repeatedly threw him to the ground, and then threw one of his shoes into a nearby parking lot.”
Reading that changed my whole perception of Texas’ problems with the law.
Gatewood’s lawyer, Jamie Balagia, would have you believe that the players are targeted by law enforcement. Up until yesterday, Mack Brown would have you believe that the arrests are overblown by we in the local media.
Something changed his mind though.
“Most head coaches in major colleges across the country have a roller coaster. Ours is more public than most, so everything we do is public,” he said. “And that’s probably good for the kids because we don’t have anything ya’ll don’t know.”
Hopefully he’s right, and either way, we find out enough that players should know to stay out of trouble.
That’s hardly the case though.
These guys are selfishly dragging Texas’ name through the mud with no regard to the opportunities they’re wasting or the embarrassment they’re bringing on themselves and the school. In Smalltown, Texas they could get away with just about anything, but here they’re just seen as crooks and troublemakers. Guilty or not, they’ve already been judged.
Playing Rice this weekend, little focus is on the game. While Texas has lost two players indefinitely to suspensions this month, they’re welcoming back Kindle and Melton. Also, Billy Pittman, who’d been suspended for a minor NCAA infraction, is eligible this week.
While the Longhorns seem to be ejecting the primary offender — Gatewood and Henry’s names are no longer on the roster — other players that recently spent time behind bars will spend Saturday on the gridiron.
They deserve the second chance, but this experience should serve as a wake-up call for them and every other Texas player. There is no margin for error right now.
Brown’s recruiting choices are being scrutinized despite the fact that just about every one of these players was courted by Oklahoma and Texas A&M. UT is being compared to “The U.”
Texas has plenty of smart, down-to-earth players like Tony Hills and Lamarr Houston, but being a good person isn’t usually newsworthy.
News is what happens on the football field or when the police are involved, and right now these Longhorns are making plenty of news away from the stadium.
With the team’s lackluster play on the field, their big headlines are coming in the middle of the week, and Texas coaches and fans can only cringe.
“I’m not trying to hide from anything,” Brown said. “We don’t do that here.”
That makes sense to me. If they were any better at hiding, maybe they wouldn’t be getting caught constantly.