Florida Football: More legal woes for the Gators ahead of 2018?

An accused sports gambler has filed some pretty serious allegations against a group of Florida football players.

To be completely fair, I am going to do a Live PD-style disclaimer here and state that all accused players could be innocent of wrongdoing. In addition, the injured party here could be full of hooey. However, if even a fraction of these reports has veracity, the players in question need some counseling at the very least.

Here is the current tale of the weird out of the Swamp.

Devante Zachery, also known as “Tay Bang”, has filed several police reports with the Gainesville Police Department, starting in February of this year. First Coast News reported this week that there has been an ongoing feud between Gainesville local Zachery and Florida players that devolved into violence.

The first incident occurred in February, at local nightclub Rain. Words were allegedly exchanged between Zachery and the players. At this point, Zachery called the banter “playful”, but the following weekend, there was an incident between some of Zachery’s friends and the same group of Gator players at the Oaks Mall. On Feb. 25, the Gainesville police stopped a group of players “acting in an aggressive manner”.

The reports kept coming in, culminating in a bizarre altercation between Zachery and the same group in May involving air rifles, rocks and a frying pan. The whole thing was caught on video.

According to the same report in First Coast News, the whole thing began when the Gator season hit the rocks last year. Zachery was supposedly angry because he had lost a great deal of money betting on the team.  If you want to read the full report, the FCN story will give you the details, but here is where it gets interesting.

Justin Watkins, a freshman at Florida, was arrested Tuesday. This is his second arrest in three months, mind you. Watkins’ charges are myriad, but the worst is felony kidnapping and false imprisonment and domestic battery by strangulation. He was suspended from the team and has since announced that he will be leaving the Gators.

As I pointed out in this post last year, the University of Florida had some serious legal issues with several of its players. The team has been beset with legal woes since Urban Meyer was at the helm — to wit, Aaron Hernandez got arrested several times during his stint at UF.

Last year, there were the credit-card fraud incidents — for which no one saw a day of jail time — then there were a bunch of drug charges. Now with this kerfuffle, it looks like UF might have more players getting suspended depending on how these accusations play out.

Dan Mullen is expected to run a tighter ship, but if these allegations are true, it appears that the general nitwittery at the school continues.