Apparently. Or allegedly, if that makes your allegiance feel better.
Mid-February, Florida tight end A.C. Leonard was arrested on a charge of simple domestic battery involving his live-in girlfriend. The details surrounding the arrest were far from simple but certainly in the battery range, lowlife division:The report states Leonard and his girlfriend — they’ve lived together for about the past month — were involved in a verbal dispute at around 7:20 when the fight escalated into a physical confrontation. Leonard reportedly “shoved [his girlfriend] forcibly with both hands in her chest/neck area. The force of the shove knocked her down to the ground, causing her head to strike a dog cage that was behind her.”
Leonard then reportedly told the woman to leave and attempted to drag her by her hair out the door. When she resisted, the police report states Leonard grabbed his girlfriend by her feet and pulled her out of the apartment before locking her out.
On the same day that incident came to the public light, Leonard was suspended indefinitely by head coach Will Muschamp. In a statement at the time, the coach laid down the law in regard to his players, saying emphatically in a statement that “his behavior will not will be tolerated. It is not what we expect from the University of Florida football program.”
Wednesday, Muschamp announced in a statement that Leonard has been reinstated and is now permitted to practice with his teammates. There is, though, a string or two attached to that reinstatement.
"[H]e still has a lot of things to work through before his status for the fall is addressed,” Muschamp said, without directly addressing Huntley Johnson‘s role in Leonard’s status.
We’ll assume, then, that curbing the urge to (allegedly) drag a female by her hair out the door is one of the things to be worked through. Or, as a reminder, as Jason Lieser of the Palm Beach Post put it:
I have three daughters, and I’ll be damned if...