What is it going to take, fans?
What is it going to take, Barry?
What is it going to take, Chancellor Wiley?
What is it going to take, athletic board?
Will it need to be your daughter? Your sister? Your cousin? Your best friend? Your girlfriend? What will it take to get those in power to take action?
On Friday, Coach Alvarez said that the Colorado rape scandal \has raised all of our antennas."" Oh, really? I figured that the thefts, the other rape allegations, the assaults, the cheating accusations and the constant swirl of rumors regarding other player issues which permeate this campus would have raised Alvarez's antenna long before the recent stories of Barnett's boys rampaging through Boulder.
Now with Dwayne Smith's arrest for being party to a second-degree sexual assault, the antenna is not raised: it's broken. And it always has been. We've just been ignoring it.
From here on out, whatever happens to Smith is up to the courts. But what about the football program? Granted, we know Barry cannot be personally responsible for Dwayne's off-the-field activities. And if you look at Smith's bio, he looks like an Eagle Scout. Graduated top of his class from Hales Franciscan in Chicago, National Honor Society, etc. So his arrest is shocking because this heinous crime seems unfitting of a player with a seemingly clean past. But it still begs the question: what does Barry know about his team?
Colorado Head Coach Gary Barnett is not under fire for actually encouraging his players to hire strippers and rape women at parties. But he is deservedly under fire for being ignorant to his team's off-the-field problems. He is implicit in the lack of discipline that permeates his program like a plague. And every single coach has this responsibility. For while they cannot stop every player committing a crime, they do have the ultimate say in how a team behaves on and off the field. I might be only a student, but isn't that what being a head coach is all about? Setting the tone for how your team behaves and what type of players your team brings on board?
So it's clear. Either Barry knows he's bringing on certain players with problems, or he's not as tough as he should and needs to be. A culture in anything starts from the top. The leader allows and disallows certain beliefs and actions to occur within his or her own unit. It might not be obvious, but with each arrest, each allegation, each distraction, Coach Alvarez's own players are committing a mutiny. Whether it's committing a crime, looking the other way, or defending their actions to the bloody end, the football team undermines the discipline necessary for any group to function ... whether they intend to or not.
So what is it going to take for any of the people on top to look at the football program and determine that there is a serious discipline issue here, felony or not? This is not an indictment of all football players here. It is unfair to tag the entire team due to the alleged crime of one player. But when one becomes two, and two becomes four, and four becomes eight, everyone who loves the sport of football, who loves the University of Wisconsin, who love the Badgers, must ask themselves:
Why do we keep looking away?
Michael Jones is a senior majoring in political science and international studies. He can be reached for comment at michaeljones@dailycardinal.com.
