clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Technical Tidbits 8/20

The SEC has had over 226 players arrested over the last five years. Yikes.

Mark Richt hoists the Belk Bowl Trophy as Paul Johnson kisses his Orange Bowl ring and laughs.
Mark Richt hoists the Belk Bowl Trophy as Paul Johnson kisses his Orange Bowl ring and laughs.
Jeremy Brevard-USA TODAY Sports

With the start of football season now just two weeks away and camp winding down, we can finally begin to speculate with some degree of certainty about which members of the 2015 freshman class will be able to contribute right away. In terms of locks for playing time as true freshmen, only wide receiver Brad Stewart and B-Back Marcus Marshall appear to be in line for guaranteed snaps. Safety A.J. Gray is another interesting option who I could easily see taking over a starting job by the end of the season, but he will likely begin the season coming off the bench. In terms of sleepers, I'm a big fan of defensive tackle Kyle Cerge-Henderson and offensive lineman Will Bryan in particular. Both are exceedingly talented and much more college-ready than their fellow rising freshmen.

Freshman A-Back KirVonte Benson, who tore his ACL during his senior season of high school after committing to Georgia Tech, made a change of plans regarding his college enrollment -- he will now start the fall semester at Tech rather than waiting until January as he had originally planned. Though it was unlikely for Benson to contribute as a true freshman even if he hadn't sustained the injury, his talent and ability was still there. If all goes well with his healing process, I expect him to have a nice career on The Flats.

Someone with more time and know-how than me (namely a man named Mike Rosenburg) recently took the time to sit down and calculate the top-25 FBS schools in terms of arrests in the last five years, and the results are unsurprising. The SEC came out on top yet again, with UGA coming in at third on the list at 22 arrests in just five years. As it happens, that is 22 times as many arrests as Georgia Tech has experienced over the same time period -- just one Jacket has been arrested. That means that 13 of the SEC's 14 teams have combined for a whopping 226 arrests in football alone over the past five years. The only team not represented on that list is, unsurprisingly, Vanderbilt, which is just the good academic school used to justify the rest of the conference's shortcomings. Good work, SEC.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Top 25 college football teams for most player arrests in the last 5 years: <a href="http://t.co/lS5y2CMFcK">pic.twitter.com/lS5y2CMFcK</a></p>&mdash; Mike Rosenberg (@RosenbergMerc) <a href="https://twitter.com/RosenbergMerc/status/633702495307628544">August 18, 2015</a></blockquote>

<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

SB Nation's Bill C finished up his complete rankings of all FBS teams from 1-128 yesterday, and the Jackets come in at No. 19 in what he calls Tier Three. As it happens, Tier Three is composed of teams for which "a top-15 performance would not be surprising," and I couldn't agree more. He also has Georgia at No. 5 (questionably) and no ACC team higher than No. 17 Florida State, which is unique to his rankings for the most part.

Are you surprised by any teams in the arrest rankings? Why?