Getty Image / Todd Kirkland
Tragedy struck the Georgia Bulldog football program last January when a car driven by Bulldog staffer Chandler LeCroy with offensive lineman Devin Willock in the vehicle as a passenger crashed into a utility pole and both occupants were killed.
Medical testing and investigation by authorities showed that LeCroy’s blood-alcohol level was over twice the legal limit and that her vehicle was traveling over 100 miles per hour when the crash occurred. A lawsuit by Georgia staffer Victoria Bowles, who was in the backseat at the time of the crash, has resulted in some pretty serious accusations of poor culture being thrown against the Georgia Bulldog football program.
And, new legal filings in a Georgia court have accused the program of recruiting staffers frequently driving drunk with recruits and their families in the car. Here’s ESPN with more details.
The amended complaint alleged that “text messages show that on occasion supervisors and coaches, in effect, encouraged recruiting staff to drink alcohol with football prospects’ families well aware that staffers would leave the events after consuming alcohol.”
Association coaches and staff regularly drank alcohol at UGA football Coach Kirby Smart’s residence during recruiting events, and then, in Association SUVs, returned recruits’ families and guests back to their lodging,” the complaint said. “The Association and UGA coaches were well aware that involved alcohol, in Association SUVs.”
The amended complaint included a Dec. 14, 2019, text message purportedly sent to 13 staff members by then-UGA director of player personnel Marshall Malchow that said: “Hey guys… if you are driving you can have fun at Coach Smarts but if you are driving a recruit make sure you don’t get drunk. It will be a bad look if we have people who are supposed to be driving recruits getting lit.”
In a Feb. 22, 2022, text message, another athletic association employee told recruiting staff members that an associate athletic director said to turn a downtown Athens restaurant “into a bar with [recruits’] families and don’t leave.”
“My client’s iPhone survived the crash fully intact and contains thousands of pages of recruiting texts describing the inner workings of UGA’s recruiting activities,” Bowles’ attorney, Rob Buck, said in a statement to ESPN. “The new texts included in the Amended Complaint establish that the Association was fully aware recruiting staffers were regularly allowed to drive recruits and their families around Athens after drinking alcohol at Association sponsored events. Some texts even show that football coaches and recruiting supervisors, in effect, encouraged staffers to drink with football prospects’ families.
That does not sound very good at all for the Georgia football program and coach Kirby Smart. Again, these are just legal filings and none of these allegations have been adjudicated in a court of law. But, if they are true, it seems like that things were a little out of control in Athens the last few years prior to the tragic accident that claimed two lives.