By: Jared Shafran

How should an organization handle disciplinary actions against a star player? This question came up recently when New York Jets wide receiver Braylon Edwards was arrested on a drunken driving charge in the wee hours of the morning Sept. 21.

Neither the Jets nor the NFL suspended Edwards after the incident. The Jets benched him for the first quarter of the team’s next game against the Miami Dolphins. Edwards served his punishment, and even though he came in late, proceeded to catch two passes for 87 yards, including a touchdown.

Edwards is one of the Jets’ best receivers and has an impact on most games in which he plays. But he hurt the image his team portrays to the rest of the NFL. Are the Jets allowing Edwards to play without suspension because of his talent? How is that fair to the other players, who respected the NFL’s code of conduct and, more importantly, the law?

Here at Northeastern, coaches hold student athletes to a high standard both on and off the field as well as in the classroom. But where is the line? Should a player be punished no matter how talented they are?

At other universities around the country, the NCAA has suspended players for all sorts of violations. As far as Northeastern goes, the NCAA hasn’t had to step on campus to discuss any serious incidents with players in quite some time.

Back in May, BU’s student newspaper, The Daily Free Press, reported that four players were drinking on St. Patrick’s Day, fewer than 48 hours before the Terriers were to take on Maine in the Hockey East semifinals.

The team rules at BU say players are allowed to drink during the season on Saturdays, but St. Patrick’s Day was on a Wednesday this year. In addition to the violation of team rules, two of the players were underage.

In this situation, the NCAA did not get involved. It was up to the schools’ respective coach and athletic department to decide how to proceed. While BU has some of the nation’s best players, winning a national championship in 2009, these players in particular were shining a bad light on the program by violating the rules.

I don’t usually find reasons to praise him, but BU head coach Jack Parker should be commended for going ahead and dismissing the players who didn’t follow the team’s rules. He decided that despite how much talent they may have had, their actions impacted the university’s image and he did not want those kinds of players on his hockey team.

“Over a period of time, there have been cumulative incidents in which [the dismissed players] have displayed conduct unbecoming of a Boston University hockey player,” Parker said in a news release in May.

Coaches need to have a system in place for these kinds of incidents. Might BU lose a few more games this year? Maybe. But Parker felt the need to set an example.

I hope that if the athletics administration and the coaches at Northeastern are put in the same position, they will make the correct decision no matter how talented the player in question may be.