Red-Shirt Freshman Mike Zordich was pulled over by police on Bigler Road around 3:25 Sunday morning for driving without his headlights on, as reported in Black Shoe Diaries. It also happens that the Red-Shirt, third-string Linebacker was intoxicated, blowing a 0.19 on the breathalyzer. After thinking about this whole situation, I’ve been able to sum it up in a very succinct manner:

Quadruple FAIL.

Let’s examine the situation:

1. He was driving without headlights on.
2. He was drunk and driving without this headlights on, putting himself and others in danger.
3. He drank a ridiculous amount during a game week, while underage.
4. He damaged his career and made the University look bad.

.

I don’t mean to come off sounding holier-than-thou since anyone could find themselves in a situation like this after a night of heavy drinking, but why couldn’t he have walked home? I’ve been at Penn State for over two years now, and I’ve never needed a car to get anywhere. Even if no buses were running when he wanted to leave, wouldn’t it have been smarter just to call a cab?

I’m no athlete, but I would think that drinking that much might put my body out of whack for at least a couple of days. I have no doubt that Coach Paterno has been working our boys in Blue pretty hard this week in preparation for the season so it must have been a rough couple of practices for Zordich.

What it really boils down to is this: as a member of the Football Program, he represents all 42,000-odd students and countless alumni even more than the average student. The fact that he got a DUI and broke the law doesn’t just make himself look bad, it makes the entire University look bad.