Young athletes are being stopped by police officers pretending they need to be questioned and then awarding them college scholarships, but are the pranks good ideas?
Pranks involving police officers may seem to be all in good fun, but some are wondering if they're starting to go a little too far.
In one recent video, a cop interrupted the Texas Christian University basketball team's meeting. With a stern face, he tells the group he needs to speak to player Owen Aschieris.
"I'm just doing a follow-up for a detective," the officer tells Aschieris, who appears very worried. But as the young man reads the document he's handed, his face breaks into a smile. He's actually won a scholarship for the next semester at his school.
Aschieris isn't the only victim of a prank involving a cop.
At the University of Michigan, another video shows a basketball player being told by campus officers that he needs to be escorted to the compliance office because of his conduct on campus. As it turns out, he's given a scholarship to cover the term.
And at the University of Houston, footage shows police officers calling the names of several members of the football team and pulling them aside. The athletes look concerned until the officers declare, "Y'all got scholarships."
The trend has USA Today's For the Win writer Charles Curtis up in arms. In a recent column, he urged college teams to not use the police to tell their student athletes they've landed a scholarship.
"If I was a 19-year-old or a 20-year-old student athlete and the police walk into a room, I would be terrified," Curtis told Inside Edition. "And learning I got a scholarship would not rob me of the fact that there was a good 30 seconds where I thought, 'Well my life is over.'"
Instead, Curtis urged schools to find another way to celebrate players' accomplishments. "It’s supposed to be the happiest moment of a young athlete’s life, and it’s also a good idea not to undermine that moment by making him think he’s about to be arrested," Curtis writes for USA Today.
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