So in the midst of gearing up for the Big East Tournament, NCAA Basketball Tournament, and the madness that ensues, I got this ugly little reminder of just how much trouble Pitt football players had gotten into, courtesy of an emailed release from SI's/Time Inc's communications department.
CBS and SI joined forces for an investigative report on college football athletes with criminal records. 25 schools (specifically, SI's college football 2010 preseason top 25) were investigated and guess who was at the head of the class?
Yuck.
Pitt, according to the report, had 22 kids with a police record in its football program. To give you an idea of how bad that really is, that (again, according to the report) is more than three times the average of the other schools investigated.
The worst part to me was that, apparently, only two of the 25 schools investigated conducted any sort of background check on high school athletes. How is that possible?
Want some good news? Soon to be Big East member, TCU, was the only school with zero.
According to the release, the report will be in this week's Sports Illustrated and additional info is supposed to be up at CBS' and Sports Illustrated's websites today.