6:00: Morning News

Time for NCAA to tackle DUIs as seriously as it does PEDs

COMMENTARY

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Forget that West Virginia University annually ranks among America’s top party schools, a ranking based on reputation as opposed to metrics.

And disregard for a moment that today’s DUI in question (actually, DUIs, plural) involves the Mountaineers’ fastest receiver.

Expand your scope across campuses coast to coast, and to all the student-athletes who must forfeit multiple games for signing/selling merchandise and a full year’s eligibility for taking the wrong over-the-counter supplement.

That NCAA rulebook treats extra benefits like a matter of homeland security, yet it leaves punishment for impaired driving up to the locals.

This is an area that screams for uniformity — and some teeth — from the agency that oversees college sports. Just like its one-year ban for PEDs, the NCAA should suspend any athlete convicted of DUI for a full season. Make it a standard penalty. Enforce it across the board. No variations from school-to-school.

If a player can forfeit a year for something he bought at GNC, he can damn sure lose a year for operating a vehicle under the influence and putting lives at risk.

Consider this: A football player can be forced to sit out nearly the equivalent of four quarters for targeting. That’s a harsher penalty than some programs will place on a player for drunk or drugged driving.

WVU coach Dana Holgorsen is sorting through the details that led 19-year-old Marcus Simms to be charged with DUI twice in the span of four months. Making the situation thornier is the revelation from sources that Simms had not made his coaches aware of the first offense, which occurred in Maryland in May.

If convicted in Maryland, Simms could be charged with second-offense DUI in West Virginia, punishable by six months to a year in jail.

In the latest data available from the year 2015, more than 10,000 deaths resulted from drunk driving in the United States. That number doesn’t take into account marijuana, opioids or other illicit drugs.

I’ve made the case for a one-year DUI ban before, yet the NCAA currently leaves the punishment to coaches and administrators on a case-by-case basis.

Student-athletes are high-profile ambassadors for their schools, and just like regular students they are growing through an impressionable stage of development in college.

The limits of independence will be pushed. Mistakes will be made. Some mistakes —like DUI — are dangerous enough to warrant a stronger deterrent.





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