In an incident which took place Saturday night on the campus of UCONN, Senior offensive lineman Donald Thomas. from my new hometown of West Haven, CT, was arrested and charged with third degree assault and breach of police by the UCONN police. It stemmed from Thomas striking an employee of the Wings Over Storrs restaurant on campus.

Thomas was suspended by Coach Edsall for two games. He will miss the Rutgers game this Sunday and the following game versus Pittsburgh. He makes the 9th UCONN player arrested since May of 2005. He is scheduled to be in court on October 31st, Halloween, at which I’d have to assume he will either have the charges dropped or apply for accelerated rehabilitation like most of the UCONN athletes do when they get arrested.
What bothers me about this is that basically if you are a UCONN football player, it is ok to get into a fight. If you look, he was only suspended two games. The players involved in “Beergate” were kicked off the team. I know the “Beergate” players violated team rules but isn’t there a team rule about getting arrested or fighting for that matter. Just doesn’t seem right to me at all.

Well well, it seems as though the the Five UCONN football players who were kicked off the team for purchasing beer while in Tampa a few weeks ago, actually purchased more than two six packs. In an interview with ESPN’s Heather Cox, Coach Randy Edsall stated that there was more than two six packs of beer involved. The article also states that some of those who were kicked off the team had some prior unrelated arrests, 3 in the last 10 months. What the article really doesn’t state is the real reason for the dismissal of the players. Yes I am sure it had to do with the beer but the players broke a team rule of not leaving the hotel while on the road.

“If I don’t enforce my rules, I have no program,” Edsall told Cox. “I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning and before I go to bed at night and know I adhered to my values and principles.”

It’s pretty simple folks. While the players did purchase beer while on the road trip they broke team rules. I am sure there are some rules about alcohol too. It is college and kids will be kids. But when you are trying to build a program into a contender, this is not the way to bring the national spotlight to UCONN Football.

Coach Edsall was supposed to have his conference call with the media today and hopefully I will be able to follow up with some more information.

Well let’s see so far this season, UCONN has had 6 people kicked off the team for different reasons. The latest 5 for purchasing a six pack of Corona and a six pack of Heineken.

The five players dismissed were junior defensive end Harold Stanback, junior safety/linebacker Ricky McCollum, sophomore wide receiver Nollis Dewar and two freshmen, receiver Todd Dorcelus and linebacker Carl Teague. A few weeks back, starting strong safety Marvin Taylor, was booted off the team when he was arrested for 6th degree larceny and credit card fraud.

According to Dewar, the incident happened outside the UCONN hotel in Tampa where they were staying on Friday night. The players were confronted by the recruiting assistant, Carl Kotz and asked whether or not they had anything in their bags. They lied to him and said no.

“We were at a gas station and it happened to have beer and someone said, `Let’s get some,'” Dewar said. “There was no plan before like, `Lets go buy some beer and have a party.’ “We were walking back to the hotel and [Kotz] saw us. We just said we were going back to the room. He asked if we had anything in our bags and we all said no. Then we were in meetings later and he went through our rooms and searched through all our things and he said he found the beer. “No one drank it. No one did anything with it. Nothing happened with the alcohol. And I am 21. There was no crime committed at all.”

What gets me is this is the second time that Edsall has allowed the players to play, then subsequently booted them off the team. He allowed Marvin Taylor to play in the Wake Forest game before kicking him off the team. A normal coach would have suspended the players for the game, then had a meeting with them to determine their punishment. For some of them, it was the first time they were ever in trouble.

I guess our football team is becoming big time around here when we have one guy arrested and 5 others kicked off the team for buying but not drinking beer.