College Football players' criminal backgrounds probed
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}NEW YORK (Reuters) - A surprising number of players at top college football teams have criminal records, a new investigation revealed.
Seven percent, or one in 14, of 2,837 athletes whose pasts were checked had police records, according to a six-month investigation by Sports Illustrated magazine and CBS News.
Nearly 40 percent of the alleged offenses were serious incidents and included 56 violent crimes, said the report, which included the rosters of the magazine's preseason top 25 teams.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The figures concerned National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) president Mark Emmert.
"Seven percent, that's way too high," Emmert told the investigation's reporters.
"I think two percent is too high. You certainly don't want a large number of people with criminal backgrounds involved in activities that represent the NCAA."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Of the 25 schools surveyed, only two, Texas Christian University (TCU) and the University of Oklahoma, performed background checks before offering a player a scholarship.
TCU also was the only school that did not have a player with a criminal record.
The University of Pittsburgh had 22 players with records, by far the highest number among the 25 schools. Iowa and Arkansas universities had 18 each, while Boise State and Penn State were next with 16.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}ALARM BELL
Richard Lapchick, founder of the Center for Sports and Society, said the report was a call for action.
"This sounds an alarm bell that some new policies are going to have to be developed on individual campuses or at the national level," he said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"It's almost incumbent on all those universities who play at this level to do criminal background checks on the people they're recruiting."
College football's top league, the Southeastern Conference, leaves admission policies to individual member schools, a spokesman said.
"While this issue concerns the all of us in intercollegiate athletics, we also share a concern for the well being of the student-athlete and work with them to become better individuals," associate commissioner Charles Bloom told Reuters.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}But several coaches said conferences should mandate background checks.
"That would be the way to do it," Rick Neuheisel, coach at the Pac-10's University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), told the report's investigators.
"That protects the individual institutions. It also serves as a deterrent for young people to stay on the straight and narrow."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}(Reporting by Gene Cherry in Salvo, North Carolina. Editing by Steve Ginsburg)