The Kentucky football family got a piece of good news last week when freshman defensive end Lloyd Tubman had the rape charges against him dropped. A grand jury didn’t see enough evidence to indict Tubman and Fayette County said they don’t plan on pursuing the matter farther. It’s a surprising turn of events, as most expected the case to at least go to trial. Seeing an innocent young man go free should be a lift to everyone who was paying attention. But this is a sports website, and we have to look at that spin on the situation. That side of it doesn’t look so good.

Here’s the skinny of the situation as I understand it. After the charges were filed, Lloyd Tubman was suspended from the Kentucky football team pending legal investigation. He withdrew from school and stayed with his mother until the case was resolved. The University of Kentucky has a review board that has to hear cases like this within 60 days of an incident, well before the criminal case was dismissed. Any lawyer worth their salt would not allow Tubman, as client, to testify at such hearing before a real criminal case was tried. It seems that the board, having only one side of the evidence and a time crunch to get it over with expelled Lloyd Tubman from UK. Now that his name has been cleared, he wants to return to the football team and Mark Stoops wants him back. The only thing standing in the way of that is the University of Kentucky itself.

A rape allegation should never be taken lightly, and can’t be after Florida State’s handling of Jamies Winston and his antics. (I withhold judgement of Winston himself, having not researched the case) But the idea that a student could be kicked out of the university without being tried, let alone convicted, by the legal system seems preposterous. I’m well aware that it is exceedingly rare in a he-said, she-said case like this that the young man gets cleared without an exhaustive trial. Not to mention that many of us have a tendency to assume that such a claim against a 19-year male is almost surely based in fact. That’s the very reason that our legal system exists.

Like any process, there is an appeals process for this sort of thing and one would expect the Tubman’s to take full advantage of it. It’s hard to imagine that he would not win after the charges were dropped and personally I would be ashamed of my alma mater for handling matters in such a manner. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lawsuit if Tubman were not allowed back. Just recently a former University of Cincinnati student faced a similar situation and sued. Like Tubman, no indictment ever happened. The UC incident didn’t involve an athlete but is a window into the culture on campuses these days. Suspending Tubman from football was the right move but to derail a young man’s life without due process? I’m not sure I can continue to give my money to such an institution.