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Imrem: Kendrick Nunn dismissal sends important message sent to Illini community

The University of Illinois did the right thing Tuesday by dismissing Kendrick Nunn from the basketball team.

The call was made even though Nunn was second in both scoring and rebounding for the Fighting Illini last season.

Nunn pleaded guilty last week to misdemeanor battery in a March domestic-violence case.

Universities and their athletic departments around the country are grappling with what to do with athletes who plunged themselves into these predicaments.

College basketball and football have become so humongous that it seems that the athletics side is taking precedence over the academics side.

Let's see, what's more important? Social responsibility or winning games?

Hmmm.

I covered a national-championship football game in which Nebraska allowed the troubling Lawrence Phillips to play against Florida.

Phillips had battered a woman. After college he was convicted of more crimes. He was found dead in his prison cell in January at age 40.

I wrote from that title game in the 1996 Fiesta Bowl that Nebraska compromised itself by allowing Phillips to play.

The star running back had been arrested early in the season and suspended from Nebraska's football team for assaulting his ex-girlfriend.

Yet head coach Tom Osborne permitted him to play in the championship game, where Phillips ran for 165 yards and scored 3 touchdowns in a 62-24 victory over Florida.

Osborne defended his decision by saying he felt it best to keep Phillips within the team structure. However, he could have done that by allowing Phillips to stick around the team in some capacity but prohibit him from playing in games.

The Fiesta Bowl was Phillips' last collegiate game. Osborne's strategy certainly worked wonders for his football team but certainly didn't for his prize football player.

Illinois could have done with Nunn what I suggested that Nebraska should have done with Phillips: Keep him in the Illini basketball family but out of games.

Colleges are sort of second families — in some cases first families — and have to try to transition them from young men to adult men.

Illinois officials decided they no longer could accomplish that with Kendrick Nunn and dismissed him from the basketball team.

That was what Illinois had to do in the current climate.

Domestic violence is as serious an issue as any in our nation's college communities and has to be dealt with more severely than Nebraska did a decade ago.

Universities have made athletics the window into who and what they are, or more precisely who and what they want the public to believe they are.

Athletes are symbols of how a university addresses serious matters like domestic violence. One of the consequences is that schools and the courts no longer can or should assess light punishment for criminal and social transgressions.

Eliminating a highly visible student like Nunn from the highly visible basketball team sends a highly visible message to the entire campus community: This sort of behavior won't be tolerated by you or even by someone who averaged 15 points a game last season.

Illinois is better for this decision and hopefully Kendrick Nunn also turns out better for the lesson delivered.

mimrem@dailyherald.com

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