The off-field actions of Bill Belichick’s North Carolina football players have started to raise some alarms at the university, according to a new report.
One player has been cited at least four times for speeding, two of which include reckless driving charges.
Another was cited three times for speeding, including an instance where they allegedly were driving over 100 mph, WRAL reported on Friday.
That player’s car has also been photographed in on-campus parking spots marked for individuals with disabilities.
The infractions were brought to light in WRAL’s report, which found at least five “transfers or key players” who have been cited for speeding since January.
The players’ habits have even gotten the attention of UNC instructors, with longtime professor Mark Peifer pleading with university officials to do something about it, according to WRAL.
Peifer said players have parked in spots marked for people with disabilities, sped through narrow parking decks, backed into unauthorized parking spots and have cursed at them.
“Is there no one who can rein in these players, probably only a subset of the football team, who are tarnishing the reputation of our school and of all Carolina athletes?” Peifer wrote to Bubba Cunningham, UNC’s athletics director, in a recent email.
In a previous email, Cunningham told Peifer that he had addressed the issues to the football program.
“I don’t know how many more times I can apologize. Disappointing to say the least,” Cunningham wrote to Peifer in a separate email on April 27.
This is not the first time players from the Tar Heels football program have been hit with driving violations during Belichick’s tenure, with WRAL reporting in November that just under 20 percent of the roster had been cited, amounting to 31 speeding tickets and 10 counts of reckless driving.
“Our conduct outside of the building, outside of the program, is important to us, and we stress that,” Belichick told WRAL in November. “We’ve addressed multiple things, not just that.
“There are other things that go on, besides driving, that we’ve talked about absolutely.”
Peifer, who teaches near Kenan Memorial Stadium, started to notice large SUVs and expensive sports cars in the nearby parking deck last fall.
“It didn’t take a PhD to figure out that these were probably football players,” Peifer said to WRAL. “What started to bother all of us, in addition to the fact that they didn’t seem to have to follow the simple parking rules like parking head in, was that now almost always the handicapped spots closest to Kenan in the deck had these cars parked in them.
“That’s just not right. You shouldn’t park in a handicap spot. Nobody should park in a handicap spot.”