Time, behavior will determine if recent OWI charges on Iowa football team are isolated incidents
By Pat Harty
IOWA CITY, Iowa – In late June on a Hawk Fanatic radio show and podcast, I praised the Iowa football program for the behavior of its players off the field.
However, since then, two Iowa players – receiver Kaleb Brown and offensive lineman Cade Borud – both have been charged with drunken driving.
So, my timing obviously left much to be desired, but my message doesn’t change in that I’m still willing to say that both were isolated incidents.
Brown and Borud showed poor judgment and made a mistake that will cost them a one-game suspension as part of Iowa’s Code of Conduct protocol.
They will also be put on the scout team during the week in which they are suspended and they will perform community service on Friday and Saturday of that week, meaning both will miss the season opener against Illinois State on Aug. 31 at Kinnick Stadium.
“I think we all understand the line has been drawn,” Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz said after the Kids Day practice this past Saturday at Kinnick Stadium. “It’s going to be double jeopardy moving forward, but hopefully, we don’t have to go down that path. Enough of that. It’s just unfortunate.”
Ferentz was then reminded that there haven’t been many recent cases of his players having legal issues.
“It’s been a long time. Yeah, it’s been a long time,” Ferentz said. “We just don’t want to go down that road again.
“We’ve had plenty of guys come through and they had fun. But you’ve got to be smart, too, especially in this day and age. But luckily, nobody has been hurt.”
Illegal behavior certainly can’t be tolerated, but some of it has to be expected when your team consists of approximately 135 players in their late teens and early 20s, players that are living away from home for the first time in their life.
That isn’t an excuse. It’s just a fact.
Brown, who is from Chicago, refused to go through field sobriety tests, at which point he was found with a fake ID. Brown was 20 at the time of his arrest.
“My message to him has been very simply that what’s happened has happened. It’s unfortunate,” Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said at Big Ten Media Day. “We’ve had other guys through the years go through the same thing. All that matters right now is how he responds, how he defines it, how he wants to answer it. It’s like a team losing a game, you can’t go back and change yesterday, so what are we going to do moving forward? So far, so good.”
Brown expressed remorse at Iowa’s annual media day event last Friday.
“I let a lot of people down, and I want to apologize,” Brown said.
Iowa players have bounced back from OWI charges before, one of the most recent being graduate cornerback Jermari Harris, who was charged with drunken driving n April 2022.
Harris is now one of the key pieces to Iowa’s vaunted defense. The Chicago native has made 18 career starts and has five interceptions.
Harris appears to have learned from his mistake and he should serve as inspiration for Brown and Borud as they deal with their punishment.
And while one OWI, or any kind of illegal behavior is too many, the incidents have mostly been isolated on the Iowa football team.
When compared to some other college football programs, Iowa’s off-the-field behavior doesn’t look so bad.
Take two-time defending national champion Georgia for example.
Two Georgia players were charged with reckless driving in July, and those charges came slightly more than a year after former Georgia offensive lineman Devin Willock and recruiting staffer Chandler LeCroy both died in a car crash in early 2023. They were allegedly racing against former star defensive lineman Jalen Carter at the time.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that there have been 24 incidents in which someone in the Georgia football program has been apprehended by police for a traffic-related incident since the death of Willock and LeCroy early last year.
Iowa has had brief stretches in Kirk Ferentz’s time as head coach, especially early on, when too many of his players had scrapes with the law.
It was mostly the typical stuff such as drunken driving, possession of marijuana and public intoxication.
But Kirk Ferentz dealt with it, and player behavior hasn’t been much of an issue for at least the past decade.
No other college sport has near the size of roster as football, and with such a large roster, there is always the risk that somebody associated with the program will have a lapse in judgment.
The challenge for Kirk Ferentz and his assistant coaches is to be diligent and pro-active to help limit these kinds of incidents.
And despite these two recent OWI arrests, they have mostly met that challenge.