It almost seems like a college football season isn’t complete without at least one scandal, and there have been multiple so far in this 2018 season. The newest college football scandal comes out of Fort Worth, Texas at Texas Christian University.

Kavontae Turpin, a senior star wide receiver at TCU has been kicked off the team following an arrest on Sunday for assaulting his girlfriend, or as the police document puts it “assault of a family member with bodily injury.” Turpin allegedly dragged his girlfriend, Raiesha Atwater, across a parking lot before slamming her into the ground.

TCU kicking Turpin off the team is the right thing to do. Men who assault their girlfriends or wives are the scum of the earth and Turpin deserves to be put in jail because he damn sure isn’t playing football anymore.

However, even though TCU kicked Turpin off the team, what makes them look bad is the fact that Turpin had been arrested back in March for the same reason, assaulting his girlfriend, Atwater.

TCU claims the football staff knew that Turpin had got in some trouble but that they didn’t know that it was a battery charge. When this happened in March, it didn’t garner any media attention, which is why Turpin remained on the team, but the recent charge against him caused old incidents to resurface.

Who’s to say if TCU head coach Gary Patterson and the rest of the coaching staff actually knew about Turpin abusing his girlfriend back in March. They could be telling the truth but I think it’s a classic case of a star player getting special treatment because of how he can perform on the football field.

Turpin has been one of TCU’s top receiving targets for the past four years and through seven games this season, he’s second on the team in yards from scrimmage (442) and touchdowns (3). I think Coach Patterson knows his football team would be worse without Turpin, so he kept quiet about his assault in order to keep him on the team, a move that if correct, makes Patterson look awful.

So TCU will finish the year without its star player, and that star just fizzled out.

Wayde Sims, a member of the LSU basketball team died in a shooting on Friday morning in Baton Rouge, La.

Video evidence shows men fighting in the street outside of a Subway restaurant near the campus of Southern University, a gunshot is heard and the people fighting flee the scene, with the exception of Sims, who fell to the ground following the shot. Sims was reportedly transported to the closest hospital where he later died from the gunshot wound.

Sims was a 20 year old junior at the university, as well as a small forward on the basketball team.

“We are all devastated. We need your prayers for Wayde, for his family, for all of us. We are heartbroken,” said head coach of the team, Will Wade. Sims, who is a native of Baton Rouge, averaged 5.6 points and 2.9 rebounds for the team last season.

Friends and family of Sims used social media as a platform to share grievance and sorrow for their loss.

Shareef O’Neal will sit out for the 2018-2019 NCAA basketball season because of an emergency heart surgery that has to be performed after recently finding out that he had a heart problem.

O’Neal, who is the son of NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal, better know as “Shaq,” is a freshman at UCLA this year and was one of five top 100 best high school basketball players in the country that committed to play at UCLA. The university is in full support of O’Neal and his need to sit out for what would have been his first season as a college player.

“Freshman Shareef O’Neal will be sidelined for the 2018-19 season (medical). He will remain enrolled in class and on the men’s basketball team during this redshirt year. The UCLA men’s basketball program completely supports Shareef and his family as he gets this issue resolved.”

O’Neal seems to be staying positive about the situation and is looking forward to going to classes and being a normal student for the time being.

“Thank God the UCLA medical staff caught it early,” O’Neal said. “During rehab, I’ll be attending my classes and being a normal student. I’ll be back in no time.”

O’Neal averaged 8.2 points per game and 4.9 rebounds per game in his high school career. He’ll look to add length and strength to the UCLA team. He has good size and the athletic ability to keep UCLA a powerhouse in the world of college basketball and help the team to reach the NCAA tournament and of course complete the ultimate goal of being national champions.

Arguably the biggest game of this weekend of college football is the Big 10 matchup between Ohio State and Penn State. The teams are two of the best in the country, with Ohio State being ranked number four and Penn State ranked number nine in the country respectively.

Ohio State football’s twitter account posted a tweet showing a picture of a player in full pads holding one finger up to his facemask, as if to do the “shhh” sign. The picture had the word “silence” on it and the tweet read “silence the white noise,” a reference to Penn State’s fans being dressed in all white for the schools annual “white out” game.

The tweet has received criticism since both programs have had history of keeping quiet about scandals involving the football team. First in 2011, the Penn State scandal in which head coach Joe Paterno was figured out to have known about his assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, raping young boys over a 15 year period. And more recently, Ohio State head coach, Urban Meyer, was staying silent about his assistant coach, Zack Smith, being a domestic abuser to his wife.

The tweet, which was clearly in poor taste, has since been deleted.

“As we have done in the past and in preparation for Saturday’s game, we issued a message to our fans via the football social media outlets,” the Ohio State athletic department said on Twitter. “The message has been interpreted in ways we absolutely did not intend, and we have removed it from our channels.”

If you’re the Clemson Tigers, you’ve got to be happy with how your football team has performed over the last few years. After making the College Football Playoff for the past three years as well as a National Championship over perennial powerhouse Alabama in 2016, the Tigers are on the same track this season, currently undefeated and ranked third in the Associated Press national college football rankings. You have to be happy as a fan or member of that team, unless your name is Kelly Bryant.

Bryant, the senior former starting quarterback for the 4-0 Tigers, has decided to transfer from Clemson after coach Dabo Swinney named freshman phenom, Trevor Lawrence, the starter moving forward.

“I was like, ‘I’m not discrediting Trevor. He’s doing everything asked of him, but on my side of it, I feel like I haven’t done anything to not be the starter. I’ve been here. I’ve waited my turn. I’ve done everything y’all have asked me to do, plus more,’” Bryant told The Greenville News. “I’ve never been a distraction, I’ve never been in trouble with anything. To me, it was kind of like a slap in the face.”

Bryant is 16-2 as a starter in his time at Clemson and has shared time with Lawrence through four games this season. In those four games, Bryant has completed 66% of his passes for 456 yards with 2 touchdowns and 1 interception. While Lawrence has completed 63.9% of passes for 600 yards with 9 touchdowns and 2 interceptions.

In the offseason, the NFL added a new rule to roughing the passer in which a player landing on a quarterback with all or most of his body weight after a tackle will warrant a penalty. This rule is in place in order to protect the quarterback, but defensive players have been frustrated with the rule, frustration that is justified because it is almost impossible to run toward the quarterback and tackle him without landing on top of him. The new rule has caused players to be more cautious when rushing the quarterback, not wanting to get penalized. However, this caution from defensive players gives the quarterback less pressure and more of an advantage.

Most recently, William Hayes, defensive end for the Miami Dolphins, tore his ACL in an attempt to not land on Oakland Raiders quarterback Derek Carr in the matchup between the two teams on Sunday. Hayes was able to get to Carr during Sunday’s game and successfully sacked him, but while doing so, he tried using his leg to keep himself from falling too hard on the quarterback, which resulted in Hayes’ foot getting caught in the turf and giving him a torn ACL. Had Hayes been able to sack Carr how defensive players normally would before this rule was set in place, he most likely would not have been injured.

“Can they make a rule change now for this? Should be a penalty on QB and a fine because defender is trying to avoid putting weight on him and tears his AClL!! This just proves how dumb the rule is and how little NFL cares for position players….,” Joe Schobert, Cleveland Browns linebacker said on Twitter.

Many NFL players have expressed their dislike of the rule, and fans of the game are not fans of it as well, claiming that it’s ruining the game of football and that it’s becoming soft.

Green Bay Packers linebacker, Clay Matthews, is particularly unfond of the rule as he has been flagged for roughing the passer in all three games this season.

“Unfortunately, this league is going in a direction a lot of people don’t like,” said Matthews after losing to the Washington Redskins on Sunday. “I think they’re getting soft.”

The NFL is standing its ground on the rule and at this point in time are not looking to make changes to it.

Corey Liuget, defensive tackle for the L.A. Chargers is currently suing his trainer after failing a performance enhancing drug test, which resulted in Liuget to be suspended four games by the NFL.

Liuget’s trainer, Ian Danney, allegedly injected Liuget with a substance that was banned by the FDA and NFL, without Liuget having knowledge that the substance was banned. The Chargers player claims that his now former trainer informed him that he was going to use an over the counter medication used for anti-inflammatory purposes. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, also claims that Danney gave Liuget a prescription medicine that Liuget did not have a prescription for. The initial injection was to treat pain in both of Liuget’s feet because of a prior injury of broken metatarsals.  

Both injections from Danney occurred in California, a state where Danney is not permitted to give injection of any kind. Liuget is suing Danney for $15 million in damages for lost wages. Liuget also said that he wants to set the record straight because the suspension has compromised his ability to be a leader in his community.

Liuget is in his seventh season in the NFL and has 260 tackles and 22.5 sacks in his career. Liuget is able to start playing again on Oct. 7 in a home game matchup against the Oakland Raiders.

Nike has been receiving both praise and hate since the company and former NFL quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, announced that the two would be teaming up with Kaepernick as the face of Nike’s new marketing campaign. Monday afternoon, via Kaepernick’s Twitter account, the announcement was made with the former quarterback tweeting a picture of his own face with words placed on top of it saying: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” With the famous Nike logo and “Just do it.” phrase at the bottom.

Since then, there has been plenty of love for Nike and the message it is trying to send, people who are proud of the shoe giant for standing with freedom of speech and even claiming to buy more Nike products because of this. However, with that same love comes a lot of hate. Some say Nike is disrespecting America by siding with someone like Colin Kaepernick, that Nike is now un-American and should be boycotted. Some even going to the extent of burning their Nike sneakers and other products just to show how much they are against the decision.

On Wednesday afternoon, Nike doubled down on their decision to stand by Kaepernick, releasing a new commercial, narrated by their new controversial spokesman and featuring some of the biggest stars in sports like LeBron James, Serena Williams and Alex Morgan to name a few.

The new commercial had the same reaction as the initial announcement from Nike and Kaepernick. It brought people out on droves giving their two cents on why or why not Nike should be doing what it is doing. The commercial brought forth more admiration for Nike, as well as more dislike. It is hard to tell at the moment if what’s going on will ultimately help or hurt Nike, but one thing is for sure; they’re not backing down. They’re simply following the words of their own campaign “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”