Nebraska Football Coach Keith Williams Reported Arrest For DUI Puts Huskers In Tough Spot

That loud screeching sound you just heard were the brakes being slammed on all the positivity surrounding the Nebraska football program.

Wide receivers coach Keith Williams, the man who had been driving quite a bit of that positivity all by himself, was reportedly arrested for DUI early Sunday morning. The arrest, according to Corn Nation, who broke the story, is the coach’s third.

You can look at the report here but there isn’t a ton to see, other than this is a really bad situation. There are the rather obvious problems that arise from a coach at the state’s largest university being arrested for anything.

Then there’s the matter of the team now having to deal with what could be a pretty massive distraction just weeks ahead of the regular season opening. There is also the problem created by the appearance of this being his third offense.

While I’m no fan of DUI offenders, if it was his first, you could at least argue he made a grave mistake in judgment. If this is his third offense, it makes it very hard to argue he doesn’t have a serious problem that just came back and bit him, and the University in the backside.

The good news is, there doesn’t appear to be any injuries resulting from his late night boozy joyride. The accident report, points to an apparent car crash at the intersection of 9th and N street in Lincoln, according to Huskers Illustrated.

On the other hand, the Nebraska football coach blew a .15 so he was a danger to himself and others the minute he got behind the wheel of the car.

Realistically, there are several questions that now surround the program. The first one is, does Williams get to keep his job? Throw out the deserved moral outrage in a coach getting a third DUI and the Huskers still have a big problem.

The third offense can mean jail time. It can also mean he won’t be allowed to drive at all. It’s going to be hard for Williams to recruit anyone if he has to explain why he had to take an uber to a kid’s house. One offense could be turned into a teaching moment … maybe. Three is hard to explain away, no matter how good a salesman Williams is.

There’s also the problem of the national media and what they’ll do with a program that has a coach arrested for DUI. In a post-Art Briles world, a coach’s behavior is looked at closely. Riley and company have come in and held themselves up as a breath of fresh air after Bo Pelini and his crew. That breath of fresh air now has a rather obvious stink.

The second question is, if the Nebraska football program cuts Keith Williams loose, what is the fallout? This arrest could have some rather far-reaching repercussions for the program as a whole. There is little doubt several of the top-notch wide receiver recruits that have been looking at NU recently are looking at NU because of Williams.

Even if the recruits understand why Riley cuts ties, that doesn’t mean they’ll continue to consider the Huskers. The arrest puts Riley in a rather unenviable position. If he chooses to show loyalty to his colleague, perhaps hoping he can use the second chance as a way to finally get help, there are going to be those who think he’s putting the program’s success on the field ahead of anything else.

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If Riley ends up firing Williams, or if he’s forced to fire him by those higher up in the food chain at Nebraska, there are going to be those who claim the Nebraska football program is abandoning someone in need of help. As for what happens from here, all eyes are going to be on the school for the next few days, for all the wrong reasons.