So I was on the elliptical earlier today when a story out of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. caught my attention.

The Associated Press is reporting that reserve running back Luke Caparelli has been dismissed from the Wake Forest football team after posting threats to his Facebook.

The threats reportedly included Caparelli saying that he would blow up campus and would be carrying a loaded Uzi in his backpack. A search of the running back’s dorm room produced no weapons.

At first blush, I was outraged at this story. Upon reading a few more details, I am less incensed but still bothered. For starters, Caparelli has to be smarter than this. Post-Virginia Tech university officials and law enforcement will handle any threat, no matter how vague or taken in what context, as a serious one and justifiably so. You can’t post these kinds of remarks anywhere and not expect a visit from the police in short order, particularly on a university campus. Our generation has got to become smarter about what is and isn’t appropriate when utilizing all of this new technology.

But I have an issue, at least for now, with how this issue was handled by the football team. I doubt, very seriously, that if this were not a reserve running back and was instead a starter that he would have been dismissed from the team. However, injustices like this are hardly common in big-time collegiate athletics. But where is the support for this young man in the event that his comments were not made in jest utilizing stupendously poor judgment? So by removing him from the football team, you risk alienating him even further and additionally depriving him of the help that he may potentially need. This appears to be a really classless, spineless action taken by Jim Grobe and the Wake Forest football team and the athletic department.

All of this may be premature when and if additional details become available. The AP says that Caparelli has not returned phone calls and has not provided a comment on the matter. There is a suspicious lack of coverage on this story locally, far as I can tell. The Winston-Salem Journal has nothing, the Wake Forest student newspaper has nothing and there is no statement that I’ve seen on the Wake Forest athletic department website.

This situation stinks.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 11:58 am and is filed under College Football, Wake Forest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.