USC Trojans tailback Marc Tyler was suspended this week after he mouthed off to gossip website TMZ while leaving a Los Angeles bar over the weekend.
USC Trojans Marc Tyler got his 15 seconds on TMZ this weekend, but they'll cost him. He's suspended for at least the 2011 season opener due to his remarks.
In the video, posted to TMZ.com, Tyler is asked whether players get paid more at USC or in the pros, to which the Trojan replied: “USC, they breakin’ bread” before his buddies pull him away, saying “That’s a joke.” Tyler also references reality star Kim Kardashian, who dated former USC tailback (and current persona non grata Reggie Bush) for several years.
The university was swift to suspend Tyler from all football-related activities and from the season opener, perhaps longer.
“That is not the way that we expect our players to represent USC and our team,” Trojans head coach Lane Kiffin said in a statement.
“Although Marc may find this punishment severe, it is imperative we continue to have a high standard for player behavior. Marc needs to work hard to show us that he can meet the standards of being a USC football player.”
Tyler has a long way to go to meet those standards. The timing of his comments to TMZ couldn’t be much worse, for him or for the university, which is trying to clean up its image while under heavy NCAA sanctions stemming from improper benefits Bush and his family received.
Nothing says “I care about my university and my teammates and this football program” like a drunken boast that USC really IS LA’s pro football team, right?
Tyler, a fifth-year senior, was already awaiting a decision from the school regarding possible disciplinary actions relating to two recent alcohol-related incidents, one in which he allegedly spit on a woman while intoxicated and another in which he is alleged to have drunkenly groped a woman.
In each of these instances, the catalyst for Tyler’s misbehavior was alcohol. He doesn’t have a history of prior transgressions at USC, alcohol-related or otherwise, which makes his recent struggles with civility while intoxicated all the more troubling and raises the question: Why now?
Tyler is a veteran, and like everyone on the team who lived through the NCAA investigations, he should realize that pay-for-play at the college level is no laughing matter in this day and age.
He’s the most experienced running back on the team, which means he has a prime opportunity to make a name for himself his senior year, when NFL scouts are paying close attention. He started 2010 as the number-one back, and shared that role with Allen Bradford much of last season, but this year could be his time to shine – if he sees the field.
Perhaps the hamstring injury that kept him out for most of spring practices was a factor in the recent episodes, either because he chose to party since he couldn’t play, or because he was down about his injury situation (Tyler considered leaving the university in the past due to lack of playing time). Perhaps as a fifth-year senior at USC, he just got a little big for his britches and, as the Big Man On Campus – or around L.A. nightclubs – thought he could get away with saying whatever he wanted. More likely, he didn’t realize what he was saying, or to whom he was saying it, until the next day, when the damage had been done.
But what about the other two incidents? Three in a few short months, especially from someone who was never on the record as having any alcohol problems, is a lot. It’s magnified since he plays for a prominent team in a city teeming with celebrity reporters, and it’s particularly worrisome because Tyler is the father of a young daughter. No one, intoxicated or not, should spit on or grope anyone else, but it’s even more disconcerting when a person who should be raising his daughter and setting a good example is behaving inappropriately and disrespectfully towards women.
I don’t know Marc Tyler, but many who do have jumped to defend him as a good person with a good heart who made mistakes. Many people can drink and remain civil; some can’t. Judging solely on Tyler’s recent issues, he can’t. The sooner he realizes that, learns to stay away from the bars, and gets to the root of whatever’s really the issue here, the sooner he’ll be able to get back on the field for USC.
