Oh I agree totally TexasTigers. But, normally with this type of player who has discipline problems they have like an 800 on SAT or something like that. I was kinda surprised he had in the four digits...
The Plot Thickens Miami won't rescind scholarship offer for Parade All-American linebacker who may be facing up to five years in prison. Ê Feb 6, 2004 By MARK LONG AP Sports Writer MIAMI (AP) - University of Miami officials concede they failed to properly perform a background check on the team's top recruit. But they did not rescind linebacker Willie Williams' scholarship offer. Williams, a Parade All-American, is on probation for felony burglary charges in 2002. He also is named in three criminal complaints stemming from a recruiting trip to the University of Florida last weekend. The complaints could lead to his arrest in Broward County for a probation violation. If Williams is arrested, he could be sentenced up to five years in prison, an administrator with the Department of Corrections said Friday. Miami athletic director Paul Dee said Friday coaches and officials will review all the information that becomes available before making a decision on whether Williams will be allowed to enroll in school. "In situations of this kind, we have to be fair to the prospective student-athlete," Dee said in a statement. "All other indicators are positive, specifically his academic qualifications and the recommendations of coaches and administrators." Williams' criminal record paints a much different picture. He has been arrested 10 times since 1999, according to Florida Department of Law Enforcement records. He was charged with theft as a 14-year-old, in 1999. He was arrested five times the following year, including twice on felony charges. His most recent arrest occurred July 11, 2002, when Pembroke Pines police charged him with burglary and possession of burglary tools, according to the Department of Corrections. Williams, then 17, was prosecuted as an adult on the felony charges. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 18 months' probation, court records show. Miami athletic department spokesman Mark Pray said the school performs background checks on each recruit, but he wasn't sure if they cover criminal records. "The process used to screen backgrounds was insufficient in that it failed to reveal all that is now public," Dee said. "In this regard, we must improve our efforts to obtain information of this type in the future." Williams was less than two weeks from the end of his probation when he was named in the three complaints. Williams allegedly hugged a female student without her permission, hit a man at a bar and set off three fire extinguishers in his hotel - all in span of five hours during his recruiting trip that began Jan. 30. The State Attorney's Office in Gainesville will investigate the sworn complaints before deciding whether to officially charge Williams. Don Monroe, circuit administrator for the Department of Corrections, said Friday that his office was working with police and the state attorney's office in Gainesville to determine whether Williams violated his probation. "If we're going to do something, we have to do it before his probation ends," Monroe said. "We think we have enough time to examine all the facts and not rush into anything." Williams' probation ends Wednesday. If the Department of Corrections decides Williams violated his probation, it would then present evidence to Circuit Judge Michael Kaplan, who presided over Williams' burglary case. The judge could then issue a warrant for Williams' arrest, Monroe said. Kaplan would have sole power to sentence Williams. Monroe said the sentence could range from extended probation to five years in prison - what Williams' originally faced in the burglary charges. Florida coach Ron Zook said Friday that Williams' case has prompted his staff to re-evaluate how it decides which prospects will be invited to the campus. "We've got to do a better job of finding out everything there is to know," Zook said. "I mean, we're not the only ones. From my understanding, no one knew this."
Re: The Plot Thickens U of M accomodates all the other thugs and criminals that want to go there...why should this punk be treated any differently?
Here's more on Willie from the NY Times: February 8, 2004 He's Toasted, Then He's Toast By WARREN ST. JOHN Until a few weeks ago, 19-year-old Willie Williams was just another highly sought-after high school football player participating in the strange annual ritual that is the college football recruiting process. A 6-foot-2-inch, 230-pound linebacker from Miami, with catlike quickness, he may well become a star college player. But aside from a few recruiting gurus and some hard-core college football fans, few outside South Florida had ever heard of him. That was before the appearance of the Willie Williams recruiting diaries. On a lark last month, Mr. Williams agreed to chronicle his recruiting trips to big-time college football schools to Manny Navarro, a reporter at The Miami Herald. Such diaries are standard stuff in local newspapers nationwide; empty of all but the most polite observations, they are usually buried in the backs of sports sections, to be sniffed out by only the most obsessed fans. But Mr. Williams decided to tell his tale differently. In a personal style — part Dennis Rodman, part "Nanny Diaries" — he pulled back the curtain on the world of private jets, police escorts, squads of cheering co-eds and a conveyer belt of steak and lobster tails that has come to characterize big-time college football recruiting. As many Americans were Googling stills of Janet Jackson's exposed breast at the Super Bowl last Sunday, Mr. Williams's experiences were already spreading like a virus. They were sent by e-mail from fan to fan and posted on Web sites, and they eventually sluiced into the electronic white water that flows between friends' e-mail boxes during the long work day. In the process, Mr. Williams has become perhaps the most famous college football player never to have played a down, and the latest example of that odd conceit of the age — fame by forwarding — thanks to his illuminating candor. "When I got to Miami International Airport, this guy was waiting for me," Mr. Williams told The Miami Herald, describing his jet ride to Tallahassee to visit Florida State University. "He was like, `Mr. Williams, right this way.' When I got on the plane, I was like, `Where's everybody else?' It was me, the flight attendant and the pilot. I was bugging out." Stephen Mallonee, an officer at the National Collegiate Athletic Association, said he could not tell from Mr. Williams's columns whether universities recruiting him had violated N.C.A.A. bylaws, which say schools can entertain recruits "at a scale comparable to that of normal student life." But he said that the diaries and other press reports on recruiting excesses were certain to prompt a review of recruiting policies. "Our membership is going to have to come to grips with reviewing them because of what you're seeing in those stories," he said. "Institutions push the envelope, and it becomes a `keep up with the Joneses' mentality." Mr. Navarro said that at first he had low expectations for the Williams assignment. Now he spends his time fending off calls from television and radio producers from Boston to Seattle who are hoping to get a piece of the story. "I figured when I first started on this it would be a regular story," he said. "But when you talk to Willie — he has a mouth on him. These are things we've always heard about: the girls waiting for guys when they come off the plane, the booze, the food. Willie was more than happy to talk about it." "I don't think he honestly knows how big this is," Mr. Navarro added. It's possible, though, that Mr. Williams is learning. This week, a day after his last recruiting diary ran, and on the day he announced where he had chosen to go to school, the University of Miami, three criminal complaints were filed against him by the Gainesville, Fla., police for incidents they say occurred during his visit to the University of Florida. The complaints allege that he punched a young man in a nightclub for no apparent reason, hugged a female student without her permission and discharged fire extinguishers in a school building, a felony. While such charges against an average 19-year-old would be likely to receive little attention, the complaints have made headlines. On Friday, The Palm Beach Post and USA Today reported that Mr. Williams had an extensive arrest record for burglary and possession of burglary tools, among other things. Mr. Williams declined to comment for this article. "Willie's kind of against the media right now," said a man at Mr. Williams's phone number who said he was a cousin. Mr. Williams grew up in a medium-income neighborhood in Miami and was raised by his mother after his father died. He stood out at Carol City High, a Miami school, leading the football team, the Chiefs, to a state championship in 2003 (he knocked the opposing quarterback out of the game) and earning a nickname, the Killer. He did well in school and qualified academically to play college football, making him an ideal recruit. The first installment of Mr. Williams's diaries recounted his visit to Florida State. He was taken to dinner with other recruits at the Silver Slipper, one of Tallahassee's best restaurants. Mr. Williams said the food exceeded expectations. "Dinner was tight," he told The Herald. "The lobster tail was like $49.99. I couldn't believe something so little could cost so much. The steak didn't even have a price. The menu said something about market value. I was kind of embarrassed so I didn't order a lot. But then I saw what the other guys were ordering, I was like, `Forget this.' I called the waiter back and told him to bring me four lobster tails, two steaks and a shrimp scampi." Later in the trip, Mr. Williams went to the home of the Florida State coach, Bobby Bowden, whose wife served him platefuls of pastries. "Coach Bowden was cool," Mr. Williams said in his diary. "But Ms. Bowden was the bomb." Mr. Navarro said that as soon as the Florida State column appeared, he began to get e-mail from across the South inquiring about Mr. Williams. But it might have been Mr. Williams's account of his next visit — to Auburn University, in southern Alabama — that ignited the Internet forwarding campaign that led to his sudden fame. Though Mr. Williams expressed pleasure at sleeping in what he called "the biggest bed in the world," and said that he was flattered to be greeted by cheerleaders — they shouted: "We want you Willie! We want you!" — he offended many by referring to the women on campus as "farmer girls who talked funny." The comment was seized on by fans of Auburn's regional rivals, who forwarded the column to friends. Soon Mr. Williams's hosts at Auburn learned about the remark. Bryan Matthews, who is a senior editor at AuburnSports.com, a fan site, said the home folks were none too pleased. "The initial reaction was anger," he said. After the Auburn diary ran, Mr. Navarro of The Herald said, he noticed that angry e-mail notes were coming in from all over the country. "By the time we got to the Auburn entry, it was a national thing," he said. Traffic on the high school sports page of Herald.com, The Miami Herald's Web site, increased sixfold, exceeding traffic even for news on the hometown National Football League team, the Miami Dolphins. Mr. Williams's adventures did not end there. He was soon off to the University of Florida, home of the Gators. There he was treated to a beauty pageant of sorts, which he called "weird" because "there were some people talking about black history the whole time." He ate "so many meatballs the people there started looking like meatballs," but he drew the line at eating alligator tails. "I'm not the Crocodile Hunter," he said. It was at the University of Miami that Mr. Williams received the best treatment, he indicated. He was given a room at the Mayfair House Hotel in Coconut Grove — it was called the Paradise Suite and had a Jacuzzi on the balcony — and was ferried around in the Cadillac Escalade belonging to the head coach, Larry Coker. "When I saw he was driving the Escalade," Mr. Williams said in his diary, "I was like, `Dang, coach got some taste.' " When the recruits left for a tour of Miami's stadium, the Orange Bowl, they blazed through traffic lights with a police escort. Even the Miami coaches had been reading Mr. Williams's diaries; knowing his fondness for seafood, they were ready with shrimp and crab claws. "Coach Coker must be related to Cleo or something," Mr. Williams said in his recap, referring to the television psychic. Mike Fish, who is a columnist for CNNSI.com and who has written about the diaries, said they caught on because of their candid portrayal of what he called a cold war mentality among big-time college football programs. "What's developed is this whole arms race," he said. "When they're being courted and wined and dined, most of these kids are not going to squeal. Willie Williams is playing it for all it's worth." The downside of sudden fame became quickly apparent to Mr. Williams on Wednesday, national signing day, when young recruits announced where they would enroll in the fall. Shortly after his announcement, word came from Gainesville about the criminal complaints. Mr. Navarro, Mr. Williams's Boswell, had to report the charges. "Willie said, `It's cool, do what you have to do,' " Mr. Navarro said. Paul Dee, the University of Miami's athletic director, said Friday that the university would review Mr. Williams's situation when it had more information. "We have to be fair to the prospective student-athlete," he said. Besides a lesson in the perils of publicity — and all that steak and seafood — Mr. Williams said in his diaries that the experience might have helped him with something else: settling on a career. "After going on these trips and living like King Tut," he said. "I think business is something I want to get into."
UM will get him off easy with just additional probation. We can only wait until he murders or rapes someone. I mean look at the Florida girl that was just killed. The Florida judicial system is on a roll.
If UM doesn't look at criminal records during their 'extensive background checks', what do they look for?
A traffic ticket is the kiss of death for a Miami recruit ! Here is more on Willie, looks like he will be arrested. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/sports/7908806.htm
