CSNbbs

We have a new, rapidly rising candidate to take on the ziggy of "America's Most Outlaw Basketball Program." Things were not good there under Quinn Snyder, and now Mike Anderson is off to a really rough start.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/...enDocument

Quote:CLAYTON — University of Missouri basketball player Kalen Grimes was charged Tuesday with second-degree felony assault on allegations that he used the butt end of a shotgun to hit a man in the face during a fight Saturday morning.

Grimes, a 21-year-old Hazelwood Central graduate who led the Tigers in rebounding last season, also had a loaded .40-caliber pistol in his car at the time of his arrest, Florissant Police Chief William Karabas said.

There's also this:

Quote:Grimes has been suspended from the team indefinitely. Tigers coach Mike Anderson said in a statement Monday he was "extremely disappointed" in Grimes' actions.

Anderson recently instituted a zero-tolerance policy after Tigers forward DeMarre Carroll was shot in downtown Columbia, Mo., last week.

Yikes!

Socko you find some good stuff. It is amazing what some programs endure but since it usually never makes the national spotlight ....well then it is what it is.

It was on the Sporting News site, among other places, so it wasn't totally ignored.

But gun crimes are just a line we can't cross in college athletics. When the Baylor incident happened, it was truly shocking. I know that flashing a gun is becoming too common out there on the street for some young people, but athletes have to know that if they fall into that trap, it's the end of their college career. For this Missouri player to get into an incident like this less than a week after one of his teammates was shot is just mind-blowing.

One difference they do have in their favor, though, is that they are a part of the established power structure. Mizzou is a long-time member of one of the big power conferences, the Big 12 (nee Big 8), and they are the state university, so they have a large base of loyal followers and the rest of the the college sports world and the media won't be too quick to question their legitimacy. But if you're outside that power base of college sports that was established during the grand era of the 1960s and 70s, and you have success but also trouble at the same time -- watch out. That is what has made it so hard for programs like UNLV in basketball and Miami in football to shed their outlaw images. Same thing holds true in a lot of places for UC and for Memphis.