The trouble and the suspensions just keep coming at BYU, and now the obvious question must be asked. Can big-time sports and LDS values coexist peacefully at BYU?
On Wednesday, two more Cougar football players -- star running back Ronnie Jenkins and starting cornerback Heshimu Robertson -- were suspended for violation of school (read: church) standards. Coincidentally, another football star, Jaron Dabney, returned to school the same day after enduring his own troubles with the law and academics.They were just three more reminders that the 1990s have been a trying time for BYU's athletic department. Incredibly, in the past eight years at least 24 football players have either run afoul of the law or BYU standards, and most of them wound up being suspended from school. One of them -- Jenkins -- is a two-time loser. He has been suspended twice for violating school standards, or what is known as the honor code, which states that students will abstain from premarital sex, alcohol, drugs, tobacco and so forth.
Jenkins joins a long list of BYU football players to err in the '90s. To wit:
1991 -- Kevin Nicholl and Karlos Rhodes were sentenced to community service and a two-year probation for felony theft but were reinstated to the football team.
1991 -- Paul Pitts and Ervin Lee pleaded no contest to felony theft charges and were fined and expelled from BYU.
1992 -- Mat Zundel, Scott Charlton and Stephen DeSantis were charged with possession of a small amount of marijuana. The charges were later dropped, because the prosecutor, according to one newspaper account, "felt some confidential witnesses would be damaged by testifying."
1993 -- Hassan-Kareem McCullough was convicted offelony theft and was fined, jailed and expelled from school.
1995 -- James Heggins, Greg Steele, James Humes, Horace Tisdale and Tony Hicks were expelled from school for violation of the school honor code.
1995 -- Itula Mili and Mike Ulufale were suspended for four games for honor code violations.
1997 -- Ronnie Jenkins was suspended from school for a year, and Omarr Morgan was suspended for four games, both for honor code violations.
1997 -- Derik Stevenson was fined and sentenced to probation and community service after pleading guilty to illegal possession and use of a firearm during an altercation. He withdrew from BYU but returned to the school and the team.
1998 -- Jaron Dabney pleaded no contest to shoplifting charges but was allowed to remain in school. He was declared academically ineligible shortly before the start of the season.
1998 -- Nate Foreman was suspended from school for a year for an honor code violation.
1998 -- Tony Fields, Danny Robinson and Tacoma Fontaine were suspended from school for a year after pleading guilty to possession of marijuana.
1998 -- Ronnie Jenkins and Heshimu Robertson were suspended from the team pending a review of possible honor code violations.
So much for the football team's troubles. This is to say nothing of the basketball team, which has suspended three players in the last few months -- Mike Garrett, Ron Selleaze and Mekeli Wesley -- for honor code violations -- and lost another player in 1997 -- Bryon Ruffner -- to felony theft.
Ironically, basketball coach Steve Cleveland was so distraught over the suspensions, which occurred in his first year on the job, that he visited football coach LaVell Edwards for advice. Clearly, Edwards has his own problems.
The Cougars are at a crossroads. They have to decide what they want to be: a big-time football program that recruits the best athletes and risks the public relations problems, or a program that does the best it can with athletes who share their values or are at least more certain to follow the rules.
Cougar fans might be quick to point fingers at BYU for recruiting athletes who can't maintain school or even legal standards, but they should probably first look in the mirror. BYU administrators, in recruiting higher-risk athletes, are undoubtedly responding to the fans' growing demand for victories at the elite level of the game. Things have never been the same in Provo since the 1984 national championship season.
The Cougars, to their credit, won't compromise their rules, but recruiting athletes who don't share their values can be like trying to put a square peg into a round hole.
"I do believe there are non-members who share our values and would be comfortable here," Cleveland said recently. "I also know that pool is smaller than the one we normally recruit to. We have to be much more selective . . . When you recruit to this program, you've got to know they are committed to those values . . . it needs to be made very clear what we are. It doesn't make any sense, no matter how much they want to come, to put them in a position to fail."
For some athletes, coming to Provo is like dropping onto a new planet. What merits suspension at BYU wouldn't draw a yawn at Florida State or Colorado. A star running back can drag his girlfriend down a flight of stairs and win reinstatement on the team at some schools, but he couldn't so much as drink a beer at BYU. BYU makes no apologies for its standards, though, and shouldn't. Recruits know they are agreeing to live up to the honor code if they decide to attend BYU.
Black athletes seem especially uncomfortable at BYU. Of the 24 football players listed above, 17 are black. BYU has tried to address the problem by implementing a support group for minorities on campus. The vast majority of black athletes survive their stay in Provo, but odds are, if an athlete crosses the line at BYU, he's black (and you can bet BYU's recruiting rivals are having a field day with the statistics).
For Jenkins, a likable, earnest young black man from California, his second offense must be especially painful. One of the most talented players ever to play for BYU, he could have signed with other schools last year while serving his suspension but elected to return. When asked why, he said, "The fact that I had messed up. I felt like things wouldn't work out if I went elsewhere. I broke a rule. If I ran from a mistake, I felt God wouldn't allow it to work out."
Now it might not work out anyway.