Two UI football players arrested Saturday night
Two University of Illinois football players were arrested over the weekend following an incident Saturday night on campus.
According to a Champaign police report, officers responded to a report of a confrontation involving a group of people in the 300 block of East Green Street, Champaign, at 11:54 p.m. Saturday.
When police arrived at the scene, an officer saw blood coming out of the mouth of Kenneth Knight, 18, who listed an address on Chalmers Street in Champaign.
The officer told Knight to stand by and wait while he interviewed other people. While the officer was investigating the incident, Knight and a second person, Jordan Frysinger, 19, who listed an address on Gregory Drive in Champaign, took off running, police said.
Frysinger was caught and detained and given a notice to appear for resisting a police officer. Champaign police said the notice to appear is considered a city arrest.
When a second police officer caught Knight, the two men were pulled off-balance and fell to the ground, struggling with one another until another officer arrived to help handcuff Knight.
Knight was arrested for aggravated battery and resisting a police officer. He was released on his own recognizance and is scheduled to be in arraignment court on Thursday.
Frysinger and Knight are both redshirt freshmen wide receivers on the Illinois football team.
Both players have been suspended from competition while the investigation is completed, but will be allowed to practice, according to the Illinois athletic department.
This is disgusting! Why doesn't the University of IL start punishing players!!! When they get arrested, they are OFF THE TEAM--no questions asked!!!! The coaching staff should set some rules and make players follow those rules!!!! Why don't they establish some type of standards, higher than the ones now in place? How ridiculous! And who recruited these two? Come on guys!
This could very well be the stupidest, most uninformed comment I've ever read! First and foremost, the football team has repeatedly suspended and removed players that have gotten in trouble with the law. If you paid attention over the last few years as much as you pretend to, you would already know that. Already this year, there has been at least one player who missed the first few games of the season and another who may very well have been removed from the team. They (coaching staff) do have rules and they are applied consistently. Can't say the same for the rest of the student body. Also, other than being stupid enough to run from the cops, who says that they're guilty of the initial altercation that brought the police into play to begin with? There have always been plenty of mouthy little punks on campus who, after having a few too many, feel tough enough to spout off to football players......quite frankly, they get what they deserve. Why should the athletes on campus be held to a higher standard than the rest of the student body? Also, who recruited them is completely moot, what's that got to do with anything?
They should be held to a higher standard because a lot of them are going there for FREE!! If they are scholarship players they should have it taken away. If it was a case of them being tipsy and stupid they should be taken to jail for underage drinking or at least given a citation. How many times do players need to get away with it before someone says enough? Eventually they will get themselves into a situation they can't get out of.
Calling someone elses post stupid, while writing what is now the stupidest comment on this article, not smart.
You admit in your paragraph that several of the players have been arrested and faced 2-3 game suspensions. If a player gets arrested, he should be facing a lot more than a 2-3 game suspension. Drunk Driving some places can cost people their job, but with Illini football, it just costs you 2-3 games, and no sort of fine (tuition payment). You seem to think that the athletics shouldn't be held to a higher standard than the rest of students. I agree. But roughly 10-20 percent of the football team gets arrested each year. For that number to be the same for the whole student body, there would have to be 4,000-8,000 arrests each year. I don't know what the number is, but it's nowhere near that. On top of that, if a normal student gets arrested, he probably gets kicked out of the university. If a football player gets arrested, it's business as usual.
Get your facts straight before you call MY comments stupid......10-20% of the team arrested each year!....really!....there are roughly 80-90 players on the team....you think 16-18 of them get arrested each year.....not hardly. Also, these players weren' driving, so the entire dribble about DUI's is irrelevent in this particular instance (they are not guilty by association). Also, countless "normal" students get arrested almost every weekend.....don't you ever see the bar sweep articles? One, these normal students don't get kicked out of school, in fact, very little if anything happens to them at all, and, secondly, their names don't get published in the paper for every little thing that they do, unlike athletes. As far as them going to school for "free"....the football and basketball players on campus help generate millions of dollars for the university every year.....for the star players, a scholarship is barely fair compensation.
Jsmith...that's a pretty funny comment (no offense to our men in uniform, but they do wear a ton of heavy equip that has to be difficult to run in). On a serious note, our football team has had a ton of bad press today. I hope the IL Athletics Dept has a meeting tomorrow to discuss this. This does not reflect well upon the University or the team. Very disappointing.
I know this may shock a lot of people, but the newspaper doesn't always get their facts straight! Maybe people should wait before posting ignorant comments about facts until AFTER the investigation and all sides are heard. This may seem crazy, but it wouldn't be the first time an athlete or someone naturally held to a higher standard was accused of something wrong. Show some respect to these kids, especially when not all the facts are right.
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