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July 2008
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Kragthorpe Puts the Kibosh on Bars and Clubs

8:52 PM Mon, Jul 07, 2008 |

Louisville football coach Steve Kragthorpe seems to have had enough with the bad publicity surrounding his program. Just in the last week JaJuan Spillman was arrested, and wide receiver Trent Guy was shot in the back while leaving a downtown nightclub. Kragthorpe took the correct move in kicking Spillman off the team. He's been very supportive of Guy. But these two latest incidents seem to part of a bigger problem.

On Monday Coach Kragthorpe announced his players will have a midnight curfew and are banned from going to bars and clubs. I applaud this move but did it come a little too late. Since the end of the Orange Bowl season more than 20 players have been either kicked off the team, transferred, or just quit football outright due to a number of reasons. That's 20% of your roster gone in a little more than a year. From everything I've seen Coach Kragthorpe seems to be a stand-up guy. But is he putting too much trust in 18, 19, 20, 21 year olds to make the right decisions? Should he run a tighter ship? Have a zero tolerance policy? I don't know what the answer is but a different approach needs to take place.

I often hear people say former coach Bobby Petrino left some bad apples on the team. I refuse to use that as an excuse. Sure the players who have been in trouble may not be choir boys, but they aren't all "criminals" and "thugs". They're young men who make mistakes. I'm not saying Kragthorpe should be the fall guy. Being in charge of a hundred 18-22 years olds has to be a tough job. And Coach Kragthorpe cannot monitor their movements 24 hours a day. But if that's what's needed to make sure his guys stay out of trouble, then that's the step he's going to have to take. But hopefully with the new curfew and the ban on bars and clubs, the situation won't come to that.

Let me know what you think.




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