By Donnovan Bennett - Sportsnet TV Personality
Follow Donnovan on Twitter: @donnovanbennett
What is the mandate of a university? To prepare the future workforce? To make/raise money? To represent the greater community it resides in?
A school's mission statement likely touches on all of those things, but it should also shape the ideals and behaviours of its students, helping shape the culture of the country moving forward. A university should be a place where enlightenment occurs, where the default stance is one of inclusion. It should be a place that fosters conversation and viewpoints, even if it means embracing tough and uncomfortable viewpoints.
If you agree on these premises, you probably agree with my hypothesis that a university should have a hand in reforming and rehabilitating its wayward community members, which is what has made the recent events at McGill so disappointing.
McGill's head football coach Clint Uttley, who had been with the program since 2011, stepped down on Tuesday.
This decision followed McGill’s choice to suspend running
back Luis-Andres Guimont-Mota due to the university’s varsity
athletics guidelines following his arrest on a domestic abuse
charge. Guimont-Mota was arraigned in Montreal a week ago on
charges of assault and uttering threats and then released on $300
bail.
His lawyer Steve Hanafi says the 22 year old is considering filing
a cross-complaint against his 21 year old estranged wife (the
alleged victim) and that the university doesn't know all the facts
surrounding the case and shouldn't have jumped to suspending him so
soon.
McGill deputy provost Ollivier Dyens said in a statement, “The University maintains that the pedagogical mission of our institution takes precedence." In McGill's statement last Friday he said “the individual should not have been invited to join our team. That was not in accordance with the values of our community.”
Dyens stated that because Guimont-Mota had plead guilty to an assault charge pertaining to a 2010 bar fight, the 22-year-old should never have been invited on campus. McGill immediately suspended him from the team and launched a review of its regulations governing participation in varsity sports.
Uttley, on the other hand, explains in his resignation letter that he believes in giving people second chances and noted that McGill did not object to Guimont-Mota’s presence on the team when he was sentenced to 90 days jail time in 2013, insinuating it was because Luis-Andres won the Dan Pronyk Memorial Trophy, given to McGill’s most outstanding offensive player. "I believe in rehabilitation. The student athlete accepted his conviction and did his punishment, a fact that was not hidden from the University," Uttley explains.
During a 2012 interview with CBC, Uttley explained his thought process when it came to recruiting the player. "I felt to get Luis out of Quebec City would be a good thing, and to surround him with doctors and lawyers and engineers and high school teachers, which all of our other students are, that would be a balancing thing for him and would help him move forward as a person," he said.
Dealing with domestic abuse in football is the topic du jour in the mainstream media. In separate stories by the AP and ESPN, both the Baltimore Ravens and NFL office have been accused of overlooking the severity of assault in the Ray Rice domestic abuse case. Surely McGill did not want to be attributed with similar behaviour and decided to get ahead of the potential PR nightmare.
The Canadian legal system recognizes him as innocent until proven guilty. There is a great philosophical debate to be had on when is the right time to suspend a football player in legal trouble. When he's arrested? Charged? Found guilty? When he’s exhausted his appeal process? The NFL's member clubs have struggled with this. Despite public pressure, Roger Goodell has yet to find a uniform answer that satisfies both the rights of the players and the sensibilities of the public.
Although nobody wants an assailant in a heinous crime representing their football team, the 2006 Duke Lacrosse case proves to be a cautionary tale of due process. After three members of the lacrosse team were accused of sexual assault, the team was suspended, the coach was forced to resign and the media took the players and the school to task. The players were eventually exonerated from all charges. 38 of the team’s players would later file a lawsuit against the school.
There is one reason why it’s worth waiting for due process before levying punishment - the legal system is better equipped at investigating and handling punishment. Of the 39,000 other undergraduate students at McGill, it's likely Guimont-Mota probably has classmates who have had legal issues. If a member of the McGill debate team or choir were charged with a crime, I doubt they'd lose their right to compete immediately. Does Guimont-Mota not deserve that same latitude?
In the third-year of the business management program, he's on track to graduate with a great degree from a great institution. With some life altering challenges and trying times ahead, if there is any time Guimont-Mota needs the structure of a football program it's now.
Playing university sports in Canada is a privilege – it is not a right. If mishandled, the privilege should be taken away. Former star quarterback Kyle Quinlan was charged for assaulting an off duty police officer at a campus bar in 2011. McMaster suspended him for three games. He served his sentence and used that time to reflect upon the type of person he wanted to be and the legacy he wanted to leave at McMaster. He vowed to no longer bring them shame and negative press but to rectify his standing in the community. He went on to lead MAC to the school's first Vanier Cup championship, being named MVP. A year later, he won the Hec Crighton trophy, as well as the BLG award as CIS overall male athlete of the year. After his playing career was over he spurned potential CFL opportunities to stay at MAC as part of the coaching staff. He can now speak directly to current players about the pitfalls of his missteps and how they can be avoided.
The point is, he and the coaching staff and university took a negative situation and used it as a teaching tool. Now he is armed with the tools to pass on that lesson. That's how universities can use adversity to cultivate leadership from hard lessons.
This is not to say all of these situations are going to end up roses. Laval suspended three players after they were charged following an altercation at a bar, one of which was their starting QB in last year’s Vanier Cup, Alex Skinner. By the time Skinner's suspension was served and he could return to the team two weeks into this season, he had lost his starting position to incoming freshman Hugo Richard. When given the opportunity, Richard performed. Skinner decided to sit out the rest of the season in the hopes of resuscitating his career elsewhere next year. The consequence for the crime was unforeseen but still punitive. Now Skinner has a chance to reinvent himself.
There’s no doubt that athletes have greater visibility and are held to a higher standard. You need strong discipline despite what that might mean to the win loss column. Some of the lenient treatment defending NCAA champion Florida State has had with Heisman trophy winner Jameis Winston might be the reason he repeatedly finds himself in trouble. That said, more is asked of student athletes so we should provide them with more support.
Where that line is drawn is an individual decision that needs to be made on every campus and in every football program. Not every player is going to be rehabilitated, but that should be the goal. If any other student on campus has a legal indiscretion that doesn't automatically impact their standing as a student. Furthermore, admission into a university doesn't require a clean track record, so team staff shouldn't be told retroactively that recruiting a student with a criminal record is disallowed.
When you recruit a football player you aren't just recruiting the player. You are recruiting the student, the citizen, and in many cases the family. Other universities that were recruiting Guimont-Mota heavily backed off when they investigated his past. That is their right, but it was done based on more than a criminal background check. It is weighed against home visits, campus visits, and a determination about whether the player will fit into the team’s culture. For whatever reason, Clint Uttley decided Guimont-Mota's past was in the past and he would fit. It will be determined over time whether or not that decision was prudent, but it’s not productive to now call into question that decision.
For someone with a criminal record, it's hard enough to find employment. If you are now robbed of the opportunity to receive higher education, your options are severely limited and your socioeconomic floor is immediately lowered. That's not the type of citizens universities should aim to create. They should foster opportunities that diminish the chance of recidivism.
For me, a more fitting punishment for Guimont-Mota is mandatory women's studies courses and/or a sociology course on family dynamics. Have him apply his scholarship money to a local women's shelter or the university late night watch program. Using the universities’ pre-existing infrastructure to help him where he might be failing, using this terrible talking point as a catalyst for much needed conversation and dialogue.
Research is one of the many areas McGill is a leader in. University players are used as guinea pigs in areas like nutrition, recovery, and concussions all the time. What better place to examine the epidemic of abuse and more specifically domestic abuse than at a university?
There is no question the university's swift action in regard to Guimont-Mota's alleged domestic abuse was influenced by the vast number of domestic abuses cases in the NFL that have dominated the mainstream media for the better part of two months. It's a natural reaction for McGill to get ahead of any PR and denounce the type of behaviour the NFL is being taken to task for being indifferent towards. However, the inspired and more impactful choice would be to try and answer the questions to the problem. Why is it that the majority of domestic abuse perpetrators are running backs, the same position Guimont-Mota played? Is there a cultural reason why they vast majority of them are minorities? Is there a causal relationship with the violence and aggression exhibited in football? Does head trauma add to the lack of impulse control? An autopsy recently revealed that Jovan Belcher, the former Kansas City Chiefs player who took his girlfriend's life before taking his own, had the degenerative brain disease CTE linked to repeated concussions.
This issue strikes a chord with me because I readily preach the gospel of football to parents and young players. I ascribe to the belief that the interpersonal lessons learned from the game vastly outweigh the physical dangers of playing such a violent game. However, when players who play that same game are so regularly getting in trouble for exhibiting violent behaviour, it's hard for me in good conscience to prescribe football as the elixir that builds character.
There is a troubling trend in football of all levels. In April 2012, three Redmen players were charged with sexually assaulting a female Concordia student. A hearing for the case is scheduled for later in 2014. Despite a great season on the field, the NFL hasn't been able to go 1 week without having a player cited with a violent crime against a woman, the latest being the Cowboy's CJ Spillman who is being investigated for an alleged sexual assault.
This is a football issue, one much bigger than McGill or Clint Uttley, one not limited to just the NFL or Roger Goodell. It is one that a powerful CIS institution can have a hand in solving. We tell our athletes to embrace the challenge when adversity strikes. As we strive to foster great men and great citizens, let's take our own advice and do the same.
Follow Donnovan on Twitter: @donnovanbennett