Willie Williams' criminal history has UF, FSU and Miami evaluating policies.
By ANTONYA ENGLISH and BRIAN LANDMAN
Published February 11, 2004
GAINESVILLE - The fallout from high school football player Willie Williams' legal troubles could be a more exhaustive background check of potential student-athletes, university officials agree.
"I think this will change significantly the way people go about the recruiting process," FSU athletic director Dave Hart said. "We did not know of Willie's background and to the best of my knowledge, in talking to peers not only in our state and conference but beyond the last several days, it has been a routine process for coaches to count on feedback from teachers and guidance counselors and high school coaches."
Williams, 19, one of the nation's top-rated linebackers out of Miami Carol City High, turned himself in Tuesday afternoon on a warrant for violation of probation. He will be held without bail until a hearing Friday.
State records show he had been arrested 10 times since age 14.
Miami officials have said they were not aware of his criminal record before they signed him to a football scholarship Feb.4. Neither were Florida State or Florida, which both offered him a scholarship. Williams' official visit to Florida led to charges of felony malicious damage to fire extinguishers, misdemeanor criminal mischief and misdemeanor battery at a hotel.
"Hindsight is 20-20 and obviously we wished we had known more about Mr. Williams before he came on campus," Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley said. "But that didn't happen, so that means you've got to self-evaluate and you've got to look to see what you can do in the future to try to prevent that from happening again."
Foley said he hasn't thoroughly researched the issue of background checks but that schools must find ways to find out as much about the recruit as possible. Florida had 54 recruits on campus for official visits and Williams was the only problem, Foley noted.
Until now university officials relied mostly on the school's coaching staff to find out about potential recruits based on relationships built with the recruits, their parents, high school coaches and others closely involved with the player, said Jamie McCloskey, UF's associate athletics director for compliance.
"Obviously something happened that shouldn't have," McCloskey said. "We're looking at what we can do to help change that. We don't have answers right now. But obviously there was something out there we didn't know about that we should have.
"How can we get our hands on the information as early in the recruiting process as possible is the major question. We don't have an answer yet, but that's the goal."
FSU administrators just completed their mid-year retreat, and Hart said the coincidental timing of that allowed a great deal of discussion about this hot-button topic. He plans to bring it up at the next ACC meeting March 5.
"It's something the league will definitely talk about," said Shane Lyons, the ACC associate commissioner for compliance and governance. "I'm sure some schools, as much as they can dig deep into the background of a prospect, will be asking the question. But I don't see them going down to the courthouse to run a background check, because it's usually not an issue or it comes out in the recruitment process somehow."
Hart has consulted with FSU general counsel Betty Steffens about what a school can legally do "because you're talking about minors." She pointed out that a logical, legal starting place is a Florida Department of Law Enforcement public records search. For $23 a report can be obtained that provides a person's criminal history, although that might not necessarily be helpful.
Records can be sealed or expunged, misdemeanors committed by a juvenile might not be included and sometimes an arrest might not be reported to the FDLE. An FDLE report wouldn't do any good for an out-of-state prospect.
Florida coach Ron Zook said there are lessons to be learned from the Williams case, for all schools.
"We talked about this in a staff meeting, and we've got to make sure we do a better job of finding out everything there is to know," Zook said. "But we're not the only ones. From my understanding no one knew about this."
School officials don't want to overreact to Williams' situation, one they all are fairly confident is an exception to the rule. Hart, however, said you must look at the "extremes" in any assessment.
"There's a lot of potential negative implications, many of them being played out now," he said. "I just think it's time that everybody reassess how we do it and how we might do it better. ... It's something that we all need to be talking about. I think you'll see a change that will transcend the three Florida schools."
