Nebraska and football—a match as complimentary as peanut butter and jelly, cookies and milk or, as the trend is becoming, athletes and criminal records.

The second-ranked team that had a 13-0 season last year and is the defending Associated Press champion this season is facing troubles in gridiron paradise.

The nightmare began for the football-crazed state just hours after its beloved team clenched their second victory of the year.

For Head Coach Tom Osborne, the media-filled nightmare began the next day when word of his star player and possible Heisman Trophy candidate Lawrence Phillips’ assault charges got out.

Tom Osborne, who has the winningest record in college football, issued a small statement regarding Phillips which may have been the biggest two sentences ever to come from a respected coach ever.

“We have told all our players that abusive behavior such as this will not be tolerated. We will do everything we can to help him get his life back together, but he is dismissed from the football team, effective immediately,” he said.

Upon hearing the news of this travesty hitting the world of college football, many questions entered my mind.

Why was Phillips kicked off the team right away, and what was going through his mind as he was scaling an apartment wall at four in the morning and later allegedly beating his ex-girlfriend, Kate McEwen, to a bloody pulp?

Obviously it wasn’t next week’s big play, or how the Heisman would look sitting on the living room mantle of his newly purchased home after he signed an NFL contract.

At any rate, he definitely wasn’t thinking of his future in football.

He probably has never had to.

Lawrence Phillips is no doubt a tremendous football player, but is a star with a questionable past under recent scrutiny from NCAA officials and now the entire nation.

So many athletes who get in some sort of trouble today, just like Phillips, are caught up in the web of disillusionment and deceit weaved by “good-willed” coaches and supporters who refuse to discipline the young offenders for the sake of the team or the athlete’s career.

And it starts early.

Case in point, at a small high school in Central Iowa, a freshman just starting high school and beginning what seemed to be a promising high school football career, recently got charged with a misdemeanor assault the summer after his eighth grade year while he was enrolled in the high school’s program of driver’s education.

Such a charge should render the player ineligible for six months according to the school’s conduct code because he was considered a high school student.

But by way of the administration’s quick thinking and the coach’s tactics, the boy who should be punished for his assault crime is still on the playing field, and if history repeats itself, he will remain there because of his athletic skills.

It’s a vicious cycle and the real losers are the athletes who get caught up in it.

Coaches are types of parent figures who need to stop the pattern of criminality in their players as soon as it begins.

A lot of star players come from tough backgrounds and have to find a way out of the chaos, but as athletes and role models for future players, and as upholders of the prestige of collegiate athletics, players need to take responsibility of their own actions.

When tomorrow comes, Tom Osborne will still be the coach of the second-rated team in the country and Lawrence Phillips will still be charged with assault. Rightly, he will still be off the team, thinking of what might have been.