Mark Wiedmer
Most folks who study the University of Georgia football program will tell you the two-time defending champs are built on speed. Offense. Defense. Special teams. Everywhere. Everyone.
But could the program also be done in by speed? Specifically speeding vehicles driven by Bulldog players and Bulldog coaches and Bulldog athletic department staff members.
For the most part, this had been a player-driven problem until Friday night. It began back in January with one of the great tragedies of the off-season.
Promising Georgia offensive lineman Devin Wilcock and staff member Chandler LeCroy were killed while allegedly street racing All-American defensive lineman Jalen Carter, who was drafted with the ninth pick in the opening round of last spring’s NFL Draft. The SUV that LeCroy was driving that night was reportedly traveling more than 100 mph when it left the road and slammed into power poles and trees.
This need for speed should have ended there. It should have scared the rest of the team into obeying the speed limit, or at least something close to it. Instead, according to ESPN’s website on Monday, at least a dozen Bulldog players have been charged with moving violations since the team won the championship a few days before that tragic accident. Included in that dozen were defensive lineman Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins and outside linebacker Samuel M'Pemba, who were cited for speeding in July.
But on Friday night, less than 24 hours from the opening kick of UGA’s 49-7 lid-lifter against UT-Martin, Jarvis Jones, an assistant coach and former All-American linebacker with the Dawgs, was arrested on charges of reckless driving and speeding. He was reportedly driving his 1984 Buick Regal 86 mph in a 40-mile zone. He was released on $2,400 bond.
Said Georgia head coach Kirby Smart when asked about the situation: “There will be internal discipline. It’s a personnel matter and I can’t comment further on it.”
Here’s the kicker, especially since the players haven’t learned a thing after a teammate lost his life due to speeding: Jones is the Bulldogs player connection coordinator, which presumably means he’s kind of a bridge between the coaches and the players. Apparently his motto is: Don’t do as I do. Do as I say do.
According to 2021 stats compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 12,330 people were killed that year due to driving at excessive speeds. When the 2023 stats are released, at least two of those people will be Wilcock and LeCroy, who had earlier that day participated in a celebration of Georgia’s second straight national championship.
Wilcock was expected to play a big role in the Bulldogs winning a third. LeCroy was moving up the ladder in the UGA athletic department. How far either of them might have advanced their careers we’ll never know because of excessive speed.
What we do know is that Smart’s attempts to make his players aware of the dangers of driving an automobile too fast aren't working. And now it’s touched his staff, which certainly should know better.
Here’s an idea or three for what Smart might do. If a player is cited for speeding and it can be proved, the coaching staff takes his car keys for either the rest of the season, or for two months if it’s the off-season. On the second citation, if there is one, he loses his car privileges for 12 months.
As for coaches, the first offense results in a week’s lost salary. The second offense is a month without pay. And should there be a third offense, well, as the late, great Vince Lombardi once told Paul Hornung about being fined for being out late, “If (after two offenses) you’re still going out, call me when you (break curfew again) and I’ll go with you. I want to see what’s worth losing this much money.”
The point is, this makes everybody - Smart, the coaches, the players, the administration - look bad.
And Smart basically said as much when he told those assembled at SEC Media Days in July: “What's going to happen to my program is every time somebody gets a speeding ticket, it's going to be the front-page story. If they went and combed every SEC player and researched 'em for speeding tickets, they'd find a lot more of them.
"But when I say we're under a microscope, it's a good microscope. 'Cause you know what it's making us do? It's making us try to prevent it. We're doing more to prevent speeding than anybody in the country."
When one of your coaches, one of your most decorated former players, is going 46 miles over the speed limit less than 24 hours from the opening kickoff of the season, you’re not doing enough. Not even close.
Yet at least one Bulldog seems to understand the big picture in all this.
Fourth year junior offensive lineman Sedrick Van Pran told ESPN at SEC Media Days back in July, some seven weeks before Jones was arrested: "I don't want to say (the continued speeding tickets) are a slap in the face, because that makes it seem like it's more so intentional, and it's not. It's more so that we're just letting down the university and the guys that have come before us, whether that be on the team or just successful people who come through the university. So it was more so understanding that you're representing more than yourself and that it has to tighten up, it has to be fixed - like period.”
If I’m Smart, somewhere down the road, I make Van Pran my next player connection coordinator.