At Georgia, the party's over

A senseless, deadly street-racing wreck comes into darker focus

To avoid nausea, please scroll quickly past any story that deems it important to report that Jalen Carter, Georgia defensive lineman, might fall in the first round of the NFL draft.

Carter will be lucky not to fall into a jail cell. He was charged with reckless driving for his actions at approximately 3 a.m. on Jan. 15, as he participated in a blistering speed race with a car driven by a young woman who worked in Georgia’s football recruiting office. That car carried two of Carter’s teammates and another young woman. The driver of that Ford SUV was 24-year-old Chandler LeCroy. Her blood-alcohol level was 0.197, more than double the legal limit. Offensive tackle Devin Willock, a 20-year-old third-year player, also died in that car. The other two passengers were injured.

Both cars exceeded 100 mph, and LeCroy’s vehicle ran off the road, sheared off two poles, hit two trees and came to a rest near an apartment building, so close that it blocked the door of one of the renters. Carter left the scene, returned, told police that he hadn’t been there for the wreck, and later admitted he was. His car did not hit LeCroy’s. He was charged on March 1, which was the first time anybody in law enforcement acknowledged he was involved, and theoretically he could spend a year in jail for each of his misdemeanors. .

In mock drafts, the 6-foot-3, 300-pound Carter is often the No. 1 pick, by the Chicago Bears. But he has to stay alive first. In September he was pulled in Athens for going 89 in a 45, in the same Jeep Cherokee Trackhawk that he was gunning on Jan. 15. The cop gave him a speeding ticket and reminded him that he had an illegally tinted windshield, although Carter had already been cited for that, and that some of his teammates had also been pulled for heavy-footedness.

“Your break is that you’re not going to jail,” the cop told Carter. “Because that would make all kinds of news, right?”

Heaven help the by-the-book policeman who does anything that leads to the incarceration of a Georgia pass rusher.

Rarely has such a celebration curdled so quickly into sorrow. On Jan. 9, the Bulldogs bulldozed TCU, 65-7, in the College Football Playoff final. It was their second consecutive championship, and the team had a parade and a rally in Sanford Stadium five days later.

Coach Kirby Smart told the crowd, “To win one championship takes talent. To win back-to-back championships takes character,” and quarterback Stetson Bennett IV talked about the way people had doubted the Bulldogs, even though they had been ranked No. 1 nearly all season.

So there were a lot of puffed chests, and a long ton of pent-up partying, as Carter, LeCroy and their party went to Toppers International Showbar, a strip club, late that night. They left at 2:45 a.m. and headed down Barnett Shoals Road, changing lanes and cutting each other off, on their way to a Waffle House.

When Carter returned to the crash site, he was accompanied by Bryant Gantt, a former Georgia player who now works for the football program as Direcftor of Player Support. Gantt knew about the crash before the Athens police did. He notified them, in fact. He had paid Carter’s fine for parking in a handicapped zone last fall. Geogia pays Gantt $209,000 to be the liaison between the team and the cops, or, if you prefer, the fixer. It’s fortunate for Georgia taxpayers that he isn’t paid by the hour.

Carter told the police that he didn’t leave the club with the occupants of the other car, but noticed they were intoxicated. But there were markings from a power line on top of Carter’s Jeep, and the police soon concluded that he wasn’t just a bystander.

They were also interested in linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson, whose Dodge Charger was nearby. Dumas-Johnson had been charged with street racing the week before, in his Dodge Charger.

On Friday, linebacker Nolan Smith got teary at the NFL Draft Combine as he described Willock as a guy “who never did one thing wrong.” Hardly anything is as wrenching as the end of a young life, especially with such promise and accomplishment. Smart maintained that the Bulldogs still had a strong team “culture,” to use the latest buzzword. Among those players who are behaving and actually using their full scholarship to work toward their degrees, and there are more than a few of those, the culture might indeed be working.

But on this occasion an employee of the athletic department violated the rules by taking a university vehicle on a spree with players. Sometimes those violations are innocent. Maybe 99 times out of 100, they escape consquences. That isn’t enough.

It’s also true that a regular, anonymous student can drive drunk without bringing out the investigative media. But that student doesn’t wear a university logo every week, isn’t making NIL money and going to school for free, isn’t privy to the nutrition and medical care and tutoring and housing that exist for the football players, and doesn’t have Bryant Gantt’s number in his contacts, so Gantt can magically appear in the middle of the night to negotiate with cops.

If Georgia can pay Gantt $209K, it can also assemble a squadron of designated drivers, maybe some students, who can be on call in case an athlete needs a ride home. Maybe the football program should ask the bar owners to tip them off if a player has left the rails. Maybe the rules should be underlined more severely: Do this or that, you get suspended. Do this or that again, you’re gone.

But Jalen Carter’s involvement was kept secret for too long. Surely the cops and the Georgia officials knew that it would get out eventually, or that the NFL has its own unerring detectives to determine just what kind of person will be getting their millions.

The city of Tacoma, Wash. finally reached a threshold and passed an ordinance that makes street racing illegal and even allowed police to arrest spectators. It reported 70 arrests, and the virtual disappearance of street racing. The rest of the country isn’t as fortunate. Racing picked up alarmingly during the Covid-19 pandemic. In Los Angeles, racing rose 27 percent in 2021 and then 41 percent beyond that in the first half of 2022. Overall, L.A. reported a 30 percent rise in traffic injuries and 21 percent rise in deaths in that period.

It shouldn’t take two deaths to furnish a disincentive to drive drunk or to race vehicles that can accelerate to 180 mph. Maybe the lesson will take hold at Georgia. But aspiring pro football players believe strongly in their own invincibility. Does the NFL care? Not really. If it did, it would have already consider removing a first-round draft pick from any team that knowingly drafts a player with a history of criminal activity, especially in the realm of violence toward women.

The message really should come from Jalen Carter himself. He might consider devoting some time to deliver it coast-to-coast, assuming he keeps getting the breaks.