Warren Sapp's Cousin Suspended from Hawkeyes

Benny Sapp, a cousin of Tampa Bay Bucs DT Warren Sapp, has been indeffinately suspended from the Iowa Hawkeye football team by head coach Kirk Ferentz.
Sapp has had a few problems in Iowa City recently including being stabbed with a broken bottle last month in an altercation at a local bar and last weekend was arrested for interference with official acts, assualt, and public intoxication. In last weekends incident, Sapp appearently pushed a young women into a window and struggled with officers as they arrested him.
Ferentz said the public intoxication charge was the cause of the suspension, because it is the one charge that is indisputable.
Sapp, a Junior starting CB who has been a leader on the Hawkeye defense since emerging as a freshman, has yet to make a public comment.

This is the 10th Hawkeye athlete to be charged with drug or alchohol related offenses this summer. A friend of mine talked to former Iowa hoopster James Moses earlier today and according to J Mo, most if not all of these incidents have been blown completely out of proportion. Moses mentioned an underaged drinking charge against Iowa basketball player Brody Boyd in which Boyd was in the establishment for 4 hours before being approached by an officer who was there when he entered. Boyd's blood alchohol level was nill, but because there was a drink within arms reach, a charge was filed.

My personal feeling is that some influential alumni and boosters are targeting Bob Bolsby for a number of reasons, including fucking up and loosing Bobby Stoops to Oklahoma and giving himself and Ferentz heafty raises over the summer.

 

doesn't ten suggest a problem? I don't know how you can blow ten incidents out of proportion. I think you start getting into the territory of legitimate concern at that point.

 

Three of the ten incident stick out to me, the two involving Sapp and hoopster Sean Sonderleiter's marijuana posession charge. Sonderleiter says the pot belonged to someone he let use his car, but I don't buy that, the kid looks like he is eternally stoned! Other than that, I think the rest are overblown, especially Boyd's charge.
The bars in Iowa City (like most college towns) allow 18 yo's in the bar, then the law states that alcohol within arms reach is considered posession...it's easy money!
Actually most of these incidents come on the heals of one bar being closed for a fire in which a bar tender poured liquor on the bar and lit it on fire like in Coyote Ugly. This resulted in a few underaged patrons being burned.
Personally, underaged posession IMO is BS unless they are under 18. Your old enough to die for your country, vote, and be charged as an adult for ALL crimes...but you can't have a drink? Still makes no sense to me.
Granted, part of that is due to the fact that they changed the drinking age in Iowa just before I would have been elidgible for the grandfather clause, but still, it's BS!

 

Question...

Were most of the incidents involving football players? I think you said 10 incidents total.

Sapp was starting last year and was projected to start again. That's a big piece of info for some of us out there. If the team has a truckload of people under a cloud of suspicion, it's the type of thing that could cause them to tank it if things go poorly at the start.

 

It was about half football players and half basketballers. Sapp's incidents are the only ones of serious concern for the FB team. There was an assualt charge against one of the LB's over the winter, but I think that has been pretty much settled, at least we haven't heard much of it in quite a while.

I really don't think there is anything going on in Iowa City that doesn't happen in the state of Florida on a daily basis. It's just that the local media has been feasting on this shit since Fry retired. When Hayden was still at the helm, anything like this got swept under the rug, but I know for a fact that things happened...witnessed some of it with my own eyes and was even involved in a few things.

 

The woman he appearently shoved into a window has come out publically and stated that her statement was NEVER taken by police, and that the allegations are unfounded. In her statement, she said something to the effect that she and Sapp were playfully showing affection, and Iowa City Police officers assumed otherwise.
According to her statement in the paper, the officers approached Sapp and he attempted to explain that there was no concern. When he began to speak one officer said that he could not be telling the truth and opened up on him with pepper spray.
Irregaurdless, Sapp will not dispute the public intox charge, which is the charge that caused his suspension according to Ferentz.