Pittsburgh Panthers Football: No. 1 in Sports Illustrated Criminal Report

The 2010 football season was filled with disappointment for Dave Wannstedt and the Pitt Panthers. Pitt began the season ranked No. 15 with high hopes. They were the favorites to win the Big East Conference.

They had a Heisman Trophy hopeful in running back Dion Lewis. They also had a big time playmaker in wide receiver Jon Baldwin, not to mention the returning Big East Co-Defensive Player of the Year in defensive end Greg Romeus.

All signs pointed towards Pitt not only winning the Big East, but being a major factor all season long.

None of that happened of course.

The disappointment continued as Wannstedt was replaced by Michael Haywood as head coach. We know how that ended as Haywood was arrested and fired less than a month into the job.

Now, the disappointment continues and the Panthers have hit rock bottom.

The Pitt football team has finally climbed to No. 1 in the rankings, except this time it's a list they didn't want to be on.

Sports Illustrated recently did a six month study of all of the Top 25 teams in last season's preseason poll and the Panthers ranked No. 1 with the most players (22) in trouble with the law.

In a span from mid-July to late September, four players were arrested for four separate violent crimes.

Defensive end Jabaal Sheard threw a man through a window of an art gallery, but pleaded down to a reduced charge in August and was allowed to remain with the team.

In September, redshirt freshman running back Jason Douglas was charged with aggravated assault by vehicle while driving under the influence. He left a pedestrian bleeding from neck and head wounds. Douglas was kicked off the team.

Also suspended from the team was sophomore offensive lineman Keith Coleman, who was charged with aggravated assault and harassment, and freshman defensive back Jeffrey Knox, who was charged with assault and reckless endangerment after allegedly beating and choking a woman.

Just as things were looking very positive under new Pitt head coach Todd Graham, this Sports Illustrated report paints another black cloud over the Pitt program.

The only way to describe it is embarrassing.

The blame should start right at the top and trickle all the way down.

Pitt chancellor Mark Nordenberg and athletic director Steve Pederson should take the biggest hit. Even point the finger at Wannstedt. 

Someone is allowing the inmates to run the asylum at Pitt. Someone should be trying to keep these kids out of trouble instead of turning a blind eye to what's going on.

They know what type of student athlete they are bringing into the program, at least they should.

The fact that they didn't perform background checks on any of the 22 student athletes says a great deal about the job that they do.

The current situation at Pitt may not be comparable to what was referred to as "Criminal U," back when the Miami Hurricanes ran afoul with the law in the late '80s and '90s. It may not even be comparable to the last decade at Penn St. (who ranks fourth on the list with 16 players with police records), but nonetheless it's outright embarrassing to the program.

Since his hiring, Graham has said and done all the right things. You can bet this won't happen on his watch.

You have to wonder though how this happened in the first place.

Granted, in the end the players are responsible for their own actions, but someone should have been made an example of. I wrote a column after the Sheard incident happened and I thought Wannstedt should have done that with him.

Yet Sheard was allowed back on the team with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

Who knows? If someone stood up then and said "This isn't the way we do things at Pitt," then maybe some of the later incidents could have been prevented.

While this likely will be cleaned up and not happen in the future, for now you can add this Sports Illustrated report to a long list of embarrassing incidents that happened to the Pitt football program.

It looks like 2010 was a year that Pitt would like to completely forget about.

At least they are finally No. 1.