Tennessee’s Lane Kiffin announced today that freshmen Nu’Keese Richardson and Mike Edwards have been permanently dismissed from the Volunteer football team.
“After extensive and thorough research of the situation over the last four days and considering various disciplinary options, I’ve decided it’s in the best interest of our program to remove Nu’Keese and Mike,” Kiffin said.
“As I’ve said many times before, we hold our student-athletes to an extremely high standard on and off the field. Our student-athletes must be responsible members of society, and this type of conduct will not be tolerated.”
Freshman safety Janzen Jackson will remain on the team — for now — but will not be allowed to participate in team activities while Kiffin waits on more information.
All three players were arrested last Thursday morning for attempted armed robbery at a near-campus convenience store.
It should not come as a surprise that Jackson still has a chance to return to the team. It’s a common theme in the SEC that those players who have the biggest upside on the field get the longest leash off it.
According to sources close to the police investigation, there has been a pretty good bit of disinformation released into the public in an attempt to separate Jackson’s role in the attempted robbery from those of Richardson and Edwards.
Some in the Knoxville Police Department believe they have enough evidence — surveillance video and perhaps other sources — to make it quite clear that Jackson was involved in the incident and not just an innocent bystander.
Of course, police usually feel that they have all the evidence they need for a conviction. It’s up to the local DA to make the final judgement on whether or not to press charges.
On that front, it is believed that there is quite a bit of pressure on the Knoxville district attorney’s office to let this one slide. After all Jackson was on pace to be a freshman All-American this year and he figures to be next year’s replacement for Eric Berry, who will most likely turn pro early.
There is still quite a bit of speculation regarding what exactly took place in the early morning hours Thursday. Some close to the Tennessee program believe the attempted robbery might have been drug-related. A small amount of marijuana was found in the car. According to sources, the female driver of the getaway car also had enough cash on her to post her own $1,500 bail.
Others believe this was simply a random, one-time act. An incredibly bizarre, one-time act at that.
Still others say that this was not the first time that these three have been involved in off-the-field activities involving a CO2-powered pellet gun.
The arrested players aren’t divulging much aside from the fact that they did this because “they were bored.” And yes, that sounds just as unbelievable to me as it does to you.
Further muddying the waters, the victims in this incident did not call the police (they were summoned by a worker at the convenience store) and at least one of the victims has said that he’s not interested in pressing charges.
Also, it turns out, one of the victims was arrested in January himself for public intoxication and attempting to flee police officers (when he jumped out a window in his home).
If the victims do not press charges, that still might not be enough to let this one go by the wayside. The victims have already given statements to the police and identified the UT players as their assailants. If there is enough video evidence — or other evidence — then the Knoxville DA can still press charges against the players.
Also, if UT does plan to keep Jackson on the team and the charges are not dropped, Jackson will still have to get past a university board before he’s allowed back into school.
This one is far from over in Knoxville, and we’ll see if the stories of Richardson and Edwards continue elsewhere. Richardson was initially a Florida commitment and the Gators have allowed some of their own players who have been charged with felonies to remain on their team. Might UF be a landing spot for Richardson?
I doubt that Urban Meyer would go down that road, but if Houston Nutt was willing to sign Jamar Hornsby — after his dismissal from Florida — then anything is possible.
This is college football in the South. And as much as schools negatively recruit against one another with arrest and discipline information, if a coach believes a player can help his team, he’ll at least explore the possibility of bringing him in.
So don’t be surprised to see misters Richardson and Edwards pop up somewhere else. And for now, at least, it looks like Jackson will remain in Knoxville.
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It seems that Tennessee has had yet another freshman football player find himself in trouble with the law in recent days. Safety 
Each Tuesday we try to bring you the clips from the latest episode of “The Sports Source,” a weekly one-hour sportstalk show from Knoxville.
As everyone waits for Lane Kiffin to deliver some sort of penalties to the three Vols arrested for armed robbery yesterday, I thought I’d share a few thoughts on the situation:
Lane Kiffin has had no problem running players out of Knoxville since he arrived last December.
UT athletic director 
On Monday, October 26th, UT assistant head coach Ed Orgeron spoke to The Knoxville Quarterback Club.
