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Alex Scarborough, ESPN Staff Writer
Georgia coaching staff member Jarvis Jones was arrested for reckless driving and speeding less than 24 hours before the two-time defending champion Bulldogs’ season opener.
Jones, a former All-American linebacker at Georgia who played four seasons for the Pittsburgh Steelers, is the Bulldogs player connection coordinator under coach Kirby Smart. Athens-Clarke County Police arrested Jones, Friday night, on misdemeanor charges of reckless driving and speeding-maximum limits.
He was released on $2,400 bond.
Georgia, which has won back-to-back national titles, opened its season on Saturday night with a 48-7 win over UT Martin.
At least a dozen Bulldog players have been charged with moving violations since the team won the championship in January.
In July, defensive lineman Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins and outside linebacker Samuel M’Pemba were cited for speeding.
The night of Georgia’s championship celebration, on Jan. 15, offensive lineman Devin Willock and staff member Chandler LeCroy were killed in a car wreck in which police alleged that former defensive lineman Jalen Carter was racing them.
LeCroy’s SUV was traveling more than 100 mph when it left the road and slammed into power poles and trees.
At SEC media days this summer, Smart said UGA brought in police to speak to the team and started a system of “checks and balances” for self-reporting speeding tickets.
Smart said he was “disappointed” by the number of traffic tickets among his players.
At the same time, he told ESPN that he couldn’t “eradicate” speeding.
“But what’s going to happen to my program is every time somebody gets a speeding ticket, it’s going to be the front-page story,” Smart said. “If they went and combed every SEC player and researched ’em for speeding tickets, they’d find a lot more of them.
“But when I say we’re under a microscope, it’s a good microscope. ‘Cause you know what it’s making us do? It’s making us try to prevent it. We’re doing more to prevent speeding than anybody in the country.”
Offensive lineman Sedrick Van Pran, a fourth-year junior, told ESPN at media days that the team’s mistakes “can’t continue.”
“I don’t want to say it’s a slap in the face, because that makes it seem like it’s more so intentional, and it’s not,” he said. “It’s more so that we’re just letting down the university and the guys that have come before us, whether that be on the team or just successful people who come through the university. So it was more so understanding that you’re representing more than yourself and that it has to tighten up, it has to be fixed — like period.”
Georgia will host Ball State on Saturday at noon ET.