Conduct and power down

College football players are feeling the heat of the limelight as Athens, Greece, is hoping… College football players are feeling the heat of the limelight as Athens, Greece, is hoping that the extreme heat will cease so that the summer games won’t have to be run on batteries.

Athletes gone wild, campus style.

If you go onto ESPN.com right now and click on its college football section, you’ll see several headlines. Let me just list a few.

“Memphis football players charged with arson.”

“Air Force suspends two on steroid charges.”

“FIU football player pistol-whipped student.”

“Miami CB Rolle charged with felony battery.”

“BYU players appear in court on assault charges.”

“Oklahoma St. suspends lineman indefinitely [for an arrest after an assault using a dangerous weapon].”

“Canes’ recruit sentenced to three years probation.”

Those are just a few. It doesn’t even include the arrest of Virginia Tech’s Marcus Vick, brother of Atlanta Falcons’ quarterback Michael, who was arrested for reckless driving and possession of marijuana. It also does not include the four Pitt Panthers arrested last Saturday as result of a fight that occurred on April 16, 2004.

So the question burning in my head is: what is up with college football? I know it is the off-season and there is not much to report, but college basketball is in its off-season as well, and there is only one headline on ESPN.com dealing with college basketball players being in legal trouble.

College football is getting a little out of hand.

There needs to be a better way to control, or at least to keep an eye on, the football players. I’m not saying that the football players need chaperones with them at all times, but maybe teams should be broken down into small groups of 15 players and given an off-the-field counselor.

They could meet once a week, or once every two weeks in their groups and talk about how to deal with the higher status that comes with being a Division-I football player, or how to deal with situations that may occur off the field.

This is how police officers are trained. They are shown videos of situations that may occur on and off duty. The tape is stopped and then the instructor asks the group what they would do if put in that situation. The actions and consequences are discussed.

This will not ensure that players are going to behave appropriately, just as police officers sometimes make the same mistake, but it does give them a little insight on the consequences of their actions.

Meaning, Marcus Vick would have thought about his quarterbacking career at Virginia Tech a little more before he stepped into that car or bought that bag of marijuana. It may not have stopped him, but as long as he knew what he was getting into, I’d be satisfied.

At least the Olympic torch doesn’t get plugged in.

Athens, Greece: Home of the 2004 Summer Olympics.

It’s sounding like more of a mistake with every passing day.

You have to hand it to those who chose Athens as a host site. They really did their research. You think the Olympic committees will now look into host sites more closely since Athens has turned into a living nightmare. Last summer, it was reported in ESPN the Magazine that Athens was behind schedule on building the stadiums needed to host the Olympics. Then, there was the dog problem.

That’s right, a dog problem. Athens is over-populated with stray dogs, and it was feared that they would disturb the thousands of spectators who will flock to Athens this summer.

So what’s the latest thing to go wrong?

There’s a lack of power. Greece just had its worst power outage in decades, and officials are worried that blackouts could sweep the nation during the Olympics if the summer heat continues. The venues have backup generators, but not all of them were in operation during the blackout.

This is sounding more and more like Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor is in charge of this one, except that there is no Wilson on the other side of the fence to help out.

The only thing that can help Athens out is the weather. Officials said the reason the power went out was because 104-degree temperatures caused citizens to up their air conditioners. Officials went on to say that August is generally cooler and power usage is normally down.

However, “cooler” to them is lower90s and power usage will be up considering the fact that at least a million people will be in town for the Olympics, not to mention those who generally leave Athens on vacation might feel free to stay at home this summer. You can count on most of those visiting to have their air conditioners up and running in the “cooler” August temperatures, because as an American, my air conditioner goes on when it hits 80 degrees.

The only certainty is that the 2004 Summer Olympics could really bring new meaning to the television phrase, “subject to blackout.”

Jimmy Johnson is the assistant sports editor of The Pitt News, and this week’s jargon was written on a typewriter due to sweeping power outages — an illegally obtained typewriter, at that.