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The past couple of years have been very good ones for the football team at the University of Georgia, which is currently gearing up for a threepeat in the wake of the two consecutive national championships that allowed the Bulldogs to unseat Alabam as The Team To Beat.
Unfortunately, the program’s achievements on the field have been tarnished by a number of incidents off of it.
In the wake of Georgia’s second title win in January, offensive tackle Devin Willock and recruiting staffer Chandler LeCroy were killed in a car crash linked to the high-speed street race that resulted in the arrest of former star defensive tackle Jalen Carter (linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson was also charged with reckless driving in connection to an unrelated race the same month).
While Kirby Smart largely dismissed the critics who suggested he’d lost control of the program, a report that was published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the start of June painted a very different picture while alleging the head coach has a history of failing to adequately discipline players who’ve ended up in hot water.
That article was the work of a team of reporters that included veteran investigative journalist Alan Judd, who caused a bit of a stir toward the end of June in the form of a controversial exposé that suggested Georgia had failed to take appropriate measures with players who were accused of domestic violence and sexual assault (including a 16-year-old high school recruit who was visiting the campus).
Many Georgia football fans took issue with Judd’s reporting, and the university itself issued a stern rebuke with a statement where it accused him of publishing a piece it claimed contained “errors, unsubstantiated allegations, innuendo, and possibly even fabrications” (it’s worth noting he resigned from a job at a Louisville newspaper in 1988 after being called out for fabricating quotes).
While the AJC still stands by the story, things took an interesting turn on Wednesday when the newspaper announced it had fired Judd “for violating the organization’s journalistic standards” (an internal investigation found he’d improperly combined a quote from a detective and failed to support a claim that there was a “pattern” when it came to sticking with players who were accused of sexual misconduct).
The original text of the report has been altered to remove the unsubstantiated information, and while the paper seems confident the bulk of the reporting was indeed accurate, it’s still a bit hard to put a ton of credence into the entire thing given what’s transpired in the wake of its publication.