It was disconcerting to hear that Virginia Tech wide receiver Ike Whitaker reacted to his suspension by going out to a bar and getting arrested for public swearing and intoxication. Whitaker’s past problems with alcohol are well known, mainly because he rarely shied from talking publicly about them. In the conversations I’ve had with him, he seems like a sharp kid, one who deserves to be known for more than just an underachieving football career.

It appears as though he will never again play at Tech, but that doesn’t mean Whitaker, still just 21, can’t get himself on the right track and make something of his life. Plenty of kids screw up in college and get arrested for stupid things like public intoxication. But 99 percent of those kids don’t have their errors exposed in a public forum. They quietly move past those blunders and get on with their lives.

Just because a kid wound up in the spotlight for being a good football player—and drew even more attention for his legal and personal missteps—doesn’t mean that to define his identity for the rest of his life. Most of the kids on Tech’s team will stop playing organized football when they take off their maroon jerseys for the last time. They’ll move on, move up, move away from the game that they poured four years of their lives into. They get jobs and families—things far more important than a game. It has to happen for all of them eventually, some sooner than others.

Though Whitaker is clearly frustrated by his recent suspension—as evidenced by his comments below—I hope he can someday look back on it, and his resulting arrest, as the youthful errors of a kid he long ago left behind.

OK, onward with some Whitaker leftovers that didn’t get into my story for tomorrow ...

- “It’s insane that I get suspended for missing a meeting. I’m not out here carrying a gun, doing drugs, none of the above.“

- “They were probably sitting there waiting for a reason to suspend me, and this is just b.s. that they’re suspending me for missing a meeting. I get up and practice as hard as anybody on the field every day.“

- On his reaction to coach Frank Beamer telling him he was suspended—“At that moment, I was lost of words. I could see if I hurt somebody, if I did something major.“

- “If somebody like Kam Chancellor misses meetings, they’re not going to sit him down, because they need him. But with me, it’s kind of like, ‘We’ve got Jarrett Boykin, and we can do this to Ike.‘“ (Whitaker pointed out that he was just using Chancellor as an example of a high-profile player, not as a specific case of a player who skipped a meeting and was not suspended.)

- Whitaker admitted to missing two position meetings earlier this season. He didn’t play in the next two games, Georgia Tech and North Carolina, though it is unclear whether that was completely a direct result of him missing meetings. Whitaker said another receiver—he declined to say which one—missed a position meeting after Whitaker missed those two and was not punished as severely. “He missed a meeting after that, and he doesn’t sit down for two games,“ Whitaker said. “It’s crazy.“

- Whitaker said he was misled by the coaching staff on multiple occassions—namely about the amount of playing time he’d get at quarterback during the 2006 Clemson game and about how often he would play last season after moving to receiver. “It doesn’t make sense,“ he said. “If they think somebody could physically and mentally handle that at my age – somebody whose been through what I’ve been through and lied to multiple times – it’s crazy.“

Posted by Darryl Slater in • College Sports • Virginia Tech
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