Should Xavier being taking on character risks?

A couple of interesting pieces have been linked to from our page in the last 24 hours or so. The first about former top recruit Brandon Austin, an incredibly talented guard who has been dismissed from not one but two programs for sexual misconduct for which he was never even tried, to say nothing of being convicted. The other was a story about the SEC drawing a hard line against accepting athletes with a history of domestic violence or sexual assault.

Somewhere between the felonies against which the SEC is trying to take a stand and normal behavior from a college athlete is a vast gulf of potential human conduct. Brandon Austin falls in there, as does Dez Wells, as does Brandon Davies. All of those guys did things that one (or more) institutions decided they couldn't abide despite the fact that none of the broke the law (or at least, none of them got caught breaking the law).

Between Dez Wells and the way the administration at Xavier still flinches at the term "zip 'em up," you tend to doubt that Coach Mack has much leeway to be the guy to give a troubled kid a second chance. Looking at a 6'6" combo guard like Austin who is desperate for a place to land, it's hard not to wish that Xavier would be able to bring him in.