Hokie football in a not-so-great top 10

When someone slips and falls, generally most folks are sympathetic. When the fallen person happens to be a kid who was running at the pool after catching the wrath of the life guard's whistle numerous time, the sympathy can quickly turn into the more callused you-were-warned stare.

A recent investigation and article in Sports Illustrated gives that same stare to the NCAA's top college football programs. In it the Top 25 programs are listed in order of how many players on their 2010 rosters had criminal records, along with detailing accounts of players from top programs who have remained outside of the law. Their findings concluded that seven-percent of players on teams in preseason Top 25 had been "charged with or cited for a crime."

Virginia Tech ranked as the sixth highest school in the number of players with criminal records, having 13. This comes less than a week of Hokie linebacker Lyndell Gibson being charged with a DUI and two weeks removed from Virginia Tech basketball reserve Jarell Eddie's marijuana charge. 

So how much is a school responsible for investigating a student's background and what baring should that have on a potential scholarship offer?  

According to the report only two schools, TCU and Oklahoma, perform regular criminal background checks prior to admittance, while Virginia Tech is the only school who performs a check after the student is admitted.

Obviously there is much concern in a small college town, such as Blacksburg, Virginia, when you start throwing around words such as, "criminal" and "background check," but what does that really mean about these players?

Is it really fair to list a student on the "criminal" record  list for merely being charged, not convicted, for a crime?

Also, is there any precedence for taking in a player with a checkered past in hopes of staging a Morgan Freeman-like intervention and helping guide him to a better path? Or is this being done already? If so being at the top of the list might not be such an awful thing.

Clearly each incident is surrounded by its own unique characteristics and therefore a blanket policy would seem unfitting, but the thought of heeding caution from warning signs of the past will not be ignored.

In an off season where recruiting has been at the forefront of many coaching and personal changes it will be interesting to see what impact, if any, the report has on the program and school's policies.