Should Florida Fans Worry About Outside the Lines' Discipline Report?

It's the offseason, and that means it's time for scandal.

Florida and Florida State were the subjects of a mini-scandal on Sunday morning, when ESPN's Outside the Lines featured the two schools as the two centerpieces of its larger investigation into the correlation of player discipline and how local law enforcement treats athletes.

In Florida's case, author and investigative reporter Paula Lavigne discovered that 80 Florida football and men's basketball players were named as suspects in more than 100 crimes between 2009-2014, which amounts to 24 percent of the rosters of those sports during the six-year span.

Is that concerning?

Sure. 

But most of these incidents were already known by the public, and those discipline issues were addressed by former head coach Will Muschamp. 

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It was widely known that Florida was the poster child of bad behavior under former head coach Urban Meyer. As Matt Hayes of Sporting News pointed out in his 2012 feature on how Meyer "broke" the Gators, at least 30 football players were arrested under Meyer's watch from 2005-2010.

Janoris Jenkins' second run-in with the law came in January 2011 shortly after Muschamp was hired as Meyer's replacement in Gainesville. Since that time, Muschamp cleaned up the program.  

When quarterback Treon Harris was implicated in a sexual assault claim (which was later withdrawn) in October of last year, player discipline no longer was synonymous with the Florida program. As Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel pointed out, at the time the Harris new broke, only one Gator had been arrested in the prior 15 months.

When you're running an organization of 85 scholarship 18-22-year-olds, not including walk-ons, 15 months with only one incident is a pretty solid record.

Cleaning up the program is something that Muschamp was particularly proud of, and he mentioned it specifically in the press conference that announced his dismissal in November 2014.

"

I think that goes back to recruiting, you know, when you make decisions in the recruiting process, the type of young men you want in your locker room and the type of person you want on your football team and the type of individuals you want to represent the University of Florida. That it's an inexact science from the standpoint of the limited amount of contacts we have off campus, but doing your due diligence as a coach and assistant coach to make sure you have outlined for your assistants the type of young man you want in the program and a type of guy ‑‑ if a guy has issues as a 10th and 11th grader, he's probably going to have them as a freshman in college. We have tried to steer clear of that and move forward with the right kind of guy and I think this locker room has got that.

"

His boss, athletics director Jeremy Foley, even commented on Muschamp's ability to build a culture off the field while he was firing him.

"On a personal level I will miss working with Will every day," Foley said during the dismissal press conference. "He represents everything that is right about college athletics. That's not lip service; that's the flat-out truth. The environment inside our building is the best it's ever been because of Will."

Muschamp may have left new head coach Jim McElwain some offensive line issues to deal with—which early departures compounded—but the new man in charge of the program knows and appreciates the work Muschamp did off the field.

"Will and his staff did an outstanding job building the culture while getting some really good players," McElwain said at SEC spring meetings last month in Destin, Florida.

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Florida has nothing to worry about regarding player discipline. 

From a public-perception standpoint, it's never a good thing to have one of the preeminent sports investigative outlets featuring the program in a negative light. And surely, fans and perhaps even coaches on the recruiting trail will use it against the Gators. 

But this has already been combed over time and time again.

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The report from Outside the Lines meant to illustrate how some schools do have lingering discipline problems that are either overlooked by local law enforcement or cleverly defended by a local lawyer who's cozy with the athletic department.

That's not ideal because people who break the law—whether they're athletes or not—should be subject to the same legal process that applies to everybody else.

It's not exactly breaking news either.

Florida had—past tense—had a discipline problem and was borderline out of control. The report that aired on Sunday and the subsequent story that appeared online are nothing to worry about. Muschamp didn't produce on the field, but he cleaned up the program off of it.

Florida is better off because of him.

Quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. All stats are courtesy of CFBStats.com unless otherwise noted, and all recruiting information is courtesy of 247Sports' composite rankings.

Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and college football video analyst for Bleacher Report, as well as a host on Bleacher Report Radio on Sirius 93, XM 208.

Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.