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http://www.palmbeachpost.com/sports/...6017900bb.html

It's not UM's job to save star recruit

By Dave George, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 7, 2004

All or nothing, the gift of a prized athletic scholarship or the loss of a promising young life to the ravages of the streets. That's the way the Willie Williams story is being sold. It's convenient that way, but not completely honest.

Honest is saying that anyone with the good grades and test scores that Williams earned at Miami's Carol City High School has the maturity, the discipline, and most importantly, the responsibility to look out for himself.

What came out of a Fort Lauderdale courtroom Tuesday was well short of that.

A circuit judge pronounced that Williams, a Parade All-America linebacker signed but not yet accepted by the University of Miami, is not "a lost cause" despite his 11 arrests in the space of five years. Immaturity is the major factor here, said the judge, and Williams' lawyer quickly tossed another log on the brushfire of rationalization, saying that the poor kid's probation-busting problems during a January recruiting trip to Florida "stemmed from the fact that he was given liquor."

Paul Dee, the athletic director at Miami, offered less insight into the situation but plenty of action. "Now that Willie Williams' legal issues have been ruled upon by the courts," Dee said in a one-sentence statement, "the formal application process for determining his admission status to the University of Miami will begin."

Not exactly a green light for Williams to join Larry Coker's football team this fall, but the kind of yellow that very few people hesitate to run.

College football programs are built on great talent, which means that coaches and administrators alike will bend backward for great distances to get it. They'll see a skunk of a blue-chip prospect and call him a playful otter. They'll see a huge, honking risk of a scholarship offer and call it a golden opportunity, knowing that boosters would roast them alive for playing it safe.

If Miami should have known about Williams' long rap sheet, so should Florida have known before inviting the 6-foot-2 linebacker with the NFL potential on a campus visit. And if FSU fans are getting a kick out of all this ethical shaking and baking, remember how Bobby Bowden once prayed that Peter Warrick would be charged with a misdemeanor rather than a felony for his part in a retail theft scam so that the former Heisman Trophy candidate could get back on the field quicker.

"Boys will be boys," Bobby said at the time, "and some of them seem to find more adversity than others."

So that's how it works, huh? Some young people find flowers as they walk across a meadow and others, darn the luck, find something they really wish they hadn't stepped in, again and again and again.

Well, I'm not buying it. The University of Miami does not exist as a halfway house between the juvenile justice system and the NFL. There is no obligation there to save Williams from himself, or to save society from Williams. Tom Osborne already tried that self-serving argument years ago with Lawrence Phillips at Nebraska and it's just as distasteful today.

If Williams really is going to be a Hurricane, there should be weightier conditions than Dee's previously compiled list, which includes 50 hours of community service, mandatory study hall and a dire warning not to mess up again.

He should be told, by Coker, that he absolutely will not play as a true freshman. That's a reasonable probationary period and a dose of discipline for both player and coaching staff. A stiffer option, though less realistic, would be shipping Williams off to a junior college for two years of seasoning, with the future offer of a Miami scholarship as a reward for good behavior.

Nate Harris is proving the potential value of that tactic. He had it all, then he had nothing, and now he's on the verge of having it all again.

A highly prized linebacker at Miami Edison, Harris was a member of the Hurricanes' signing class of 2002. He blew it big time shortly thereafter by getting involved in an armed robbery in Liberty City. Miami revoked his scholarship offer, demonstrating the distinction between violent crime and discharging a fire extinguisher as a prank, which was one of Williams' January offenses. Harris dealt with the consequences of his action, doing six months in a disciplinary boot camp as part of a plea bargain, and is playing now at Dodge City Junior College in Kansas.

One season down and one season to go before Harris gets out of Dodge, at which time Nick Saban, coach of the BCS national champion LSU Tigers, has indicated he may offer the detoured Miamian a scholarship.

Williams has yet to show that much commitment to his own future. Miami should be far more careful of its own reputation, so long on the mend.