The Daily Utah Chronicle
A University of Utah football player is in trouble with the law?only he says he doesn’t know anything about it.
Senior offensive tackle Doug Kaufusi, a candidate for All America status and the Lombardi Award, has two warrants out for his arrest stemming from a Jan. 27 altercation, according to a member of the Salt Lake City Police Department.
The first warrant, issued March 7, is for Class A misdemeanor assault?one step below a felony charge. The second warrant, issued April 17, is a Class B misdemeanor and stems from Kaufusi’s failure to make a scheduled court appearance in connection with the alleged assault.
Problem is, while Kaufusi admitted knowledge of the January incident, he said he is clueless about the arrest warrants.
“I didn’t know about that, [and] I wasn’t worrying about that?I’ve just been trying to concentrate on football,” Kaufusi said. “All this stuff is just coming up. I can’t talk about stuff I don’t know.”
Kaufusi’s coach said the issue was just raised within the past week.
“Before the [BYU] game, some guy called me up and asked me about this, and I said I didn’t know anything about it. So I asked Doug if he had anything going on out there, and he said there was nothing,” said U head coach Ron McBride.
And while Kaufusi hasn’t been taken into custody, as the police department does not pursue those with misdemeanors against them as actively as it does those with felony warrants, he could be facing trouble from the university, in addition to the legal system.
Earlier this year, a Student Athlete Code of Conduct was enacted to deal with incidents of misbehavior committed by U student-athletes off campus that were not covered by the university’s general Student Code of Conduct.
The student-athlete code was developed and implemented in response to then-U football player Sean Patrick O’Keefe assaulting an individual with a baseball bat in September 2000.
According to the student-athlete code, “[s]evere acts of misconduct include felonies and misdemeanor assault or other egregious acts against individuals,” and “[s]uspension will occur as soon as the alleged act is known to the Athletics Department.”
McBride said he would have to investigate the situation further, though, before deciding whether to hold Kaufusi out of the team’s Dec. 1 season finale at Air Force and any possible bowl game the 7 3 Utes might be invited to.
“It’s a complete shock to me that he has a couple warrants?I don’t know anything about this,” McBride said. “I’ve got to start making some phone calls and find out about this. This has me kind of left-handed.”
While Kaufusi, a starter on an offensive line that has yielded just 5 sacks this season?second-fewest in the nation behind top-ranked Miami (Fla.)?could be facing legal and university sanctions, he will not be hearing from the NCAA.
“We’re not involved in law enforcement, and we have no bylaws that pertain to law enforcement,” said Jane Jankowski, the NCAA’s assistant director of public relations. “That’s not an area the NCAA has elected to legislate.”
Consequently, a university athletics department that has already taken hits this year from a lawsuit filed by a former ski coach claiming wrongful termination and a subsequent internal investigation that revealed secondary NCAA violations in the football and men’s basketball programs will not get any NCAA scrutiny directed its way for the second starter on the offensive line this year to be involved in an altercation (senior left guard Ed Ta’amu was suspended for the first two games of this season).
After all, while Kaufusi may be in trouble with the law, he is not with college sports’ governing body.
“The only time the NCAA could step in is if he directly violated an NCAA bylaw,” Jankowski said.
In the meantime, while McBride tries to figure out exactly what happened, he’ll also be looking for the reason why he was never told about this beforehand.
“Anytime my players have a problem, I’m supposed to know,” McBride said. “If something major happens, usually I know the same day. Why didn’t this come up last March?”