Saturday, December 15, 2012

Let's Hope His Suspension Ends Before Conference Play Starts

Syracuse guard Michael Carter-Williams was detained at the mall, Destiny USA (I guess that's what used to be the Carousel Center) for shoplifting for Lord & Taylor. He put a bathrobe and gloves into his backpack in a fitting room.
Carter-Williams says the whole thing was a misunderstanding and evidently paid a $500 fine on his credit card and walked out of the store without police involvement.
The whole thing was caught on the security camera. Which shows he's so dumb he doesn't realize that every shoplifter tries to steal stuff while in the changing room, and thusly stores have cameras there.
He was stupid to try to steal the stuff in the first place, especially because with the way he has been playing he was a very big contract waiting for him next year.
Kids do stupid stuff, and in the grand scheme of things this is very minor.
But I hope people don't turn this into an argument in favor of paying college athletes. There is no way to ever pay them enough to satisfy them (even the pros complain and often go broke). I hope we don't hear that poor Michael Carter-Williams couldn't even buy his family Christmas gifts, so he had to steal them.
Big-time college athletes live the life. Everything they want, food, tutoring, respect, attention, girls, is available to them. And they do get a stipend, albeit small, but it is something.
This incident may remind some of you of Peter Warrick and Laverneus Coles getting busted for shop-lifting from Dillard's. Bobby Bowden more harshly punished Coles because Warrick was the better player. And maybe not coincidentally, Coles went on to become a much better pro.
Hopefully Carter-Williams will learn a serious lesson, sit out a game or two, and fly straight until such time as he gets drafted and signs a contract that will preclude him from ever stealing anything even again.

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