Things just keep getting weirder in Iowa City.
The Iowa Hawkeyes head football coach Kirk Ferentz and Iowa athletic director Gary Barta held a press conference to basically address the rumors of the last 24 hours — that multiple Hawkyes would be suspended and /or booted off the team for drug related offenses.
Though the reports weren’t true…they were kind of.By Paul Schmidt
The Hawkeyes and Ferentz will not be suspending any more players, but they definitely believe that the team was getting high.
Gary Barta basically admitted this fact at the press conference.
“We did find pretty strong evidence that there are a couple of ways that our student-athletes have and probably have at some point gotten around the test in some way,” Barta said. “That’s something that every drug testing situation, it’s almost become a cottage industry around the country, how do you beat a test.”
What is interesting about Iowa’s athletic policy is that they don’t necessarily suspend players for a first drug violation. This begs the question that, if a player is in violation, what motivation does the University of Iowa have to tell us that a player violated with it and that it is being dealt with “internally?” They have none.
Furthermore, the fact that Barta believes that players got around the drug testing system is an intersting statement. That would seem to indicate, given that, as both he and Ferentz said at the press conference, that there were no positive tests, that they believed there WOULD be positive tests.
Why would Barta think that? Did he know who was getting high? Did one of the coaches?
There is obviously more information out there that they aren’t telling, and the press conference was very lax on details except for two points.
One, was that no further suspensions would be forthcoming, or rather, they were not anticipating making any further suspensions.
Two, and this is believable, that Jewel Hampton’s departure, Adam Robinson’s suspension and DJK’s arrest were all three separate incidents.
Robinson’s being separate makes the most sense, as he had had academic troubles (described as a “hiccup”) earlier in the season. One one have to speculate if having incurred two concussions this season might have made concentration and studying in class a diffcult thing to do. That certainly would have an effect on how most would be able to perform in their every day lives, let alone academically.
So for now, the rumors of 20 player suspensions or anything like that are quelled.
However, they are not forgotten, and since Barta and Ferentz were willing to word things so very carefully during the press conference and truly not reveal much of anything (when Barta was asked how he knew that there might have been some malfeasance on the drug tests, he angrily threw the question aside), they certainly aren’t going to go away.
The question is, will we ever find out if there is any truth to any of them.
–Paul Schmidt
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