Poor Ike Whitaker. He found himself indefinitely suspended for the season after missing a morning meeting. The redshirt junior also found out that Virginia Tech Coach Frank Beamer didn't want him back on the team. Telling Whitaker that his best option would be to finish up the year and get his degree. If he still wanted to play his last year of eligibility, he would be free to transfer. Whitaker had trouble comprehending the harsh penalty for missing a meeting.
"I thought, if anything, I'll have to do up-downs after practice but then I find out I'm suspended," Whitaker said. "There are multiple people who miss multiple meetings who are still on the team. And I just don't think from that standpoint I was treated fairly, I don't. And everybody is different, and everybody has different situations and I understand that. But suspending a young kid for missing a meeting I don't agree with, I just don't. It definitely sucks ... I hope it all works out. I know everything happens for a reason."
He handled the news in a responsible adult manner. He got blind stinking drunk.
Really, really drunk. In public. He got into it on the street and was arrested for public intoxication when he got into things with a cop -- showing yet more of that fine judgment. Whitaker blew a 0.33 BAC (it only takes a 0.08 to get a DUI). Naturally, Whitaker knew that he was still the victim.
"Half the reason I was down there is because I was suspended. And I feel like I wasn't supposed to get suspended," Whitaker said. "I'm not selling drugs, shooting nobody, killing nobody, carrying guns; I'm not doing any of that. And for me to get suspended for missing a meeting is crazy."
Whitaker said the Blacksburg policemen who arrested him, including Officer Hayes, who was listed on the arrest record, knew he had been suspended.
"I don't think I was being wild (or) rude to anybody downtown," Whitaker said. "But I knew the cops know I was suspended. They were talking about it. I was talking to the cops, explaining to them how hurt I was that I had been suspended ... So I'm explaining to the cop that honestly I'm mad, I'm frustrated and the way I dealt with it was going downtown with some of my friends and trying to enjoy myself as much as possible. And then I got a drunk in public."
Of course. When I'm pissed and drinking, I like to talk to cops. Especially ones on patrol in a college town. No chance of things going bad.
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Whitaker hardly had a spotless record. He was previously arrested for public intoxication in the spring of 2006. He checked into alcohol rehab in December of that year -- missing the team's bowl game.
No one but Beamer and the team know what, if any, other issues led to Whitaker's suspension. His behavior afterwards, sure makes it look like Beamer made the right call.
