JACKETS SIDELINED
Since last season ended, Georgia Tech has lost two football players for all of next season and four for the first two games (against Wofford and Tulane):
Player, Pos.; Status
Anthony Autry, WR; suspended for first two games
Dennis Andrews, AB; suspended for first two games
Darius Commissiong, DT; suspended for first two games
Travis Custis, BB; transferring for academic reasons
Jabari Hunt-Days, DE; will miss season for academic reasons, remains on team
Darren Waller, WR; suspended for first two games
A strange run of bad news for the Georgia Tech football team continued Friday, as freshman B-back Travis Custis and junior defensive end Jabari Hunt-Days were ruled academically ineligible for the coming season.
Hunt-Days is ineligible for failure to meet NCAA academic-eligibility standards. Hunt-Days, a two-year starter at linebacker, was moved to defensive end before spring practice and performed well enough that he was expected to play a significant role at his new position.
Were Hunt-Days to regain eligibility, he would have one year remaining, the 2015 season. He can stay on scholarship and practice with the team.
Custis will transfer to Georgia Military College, a junior college, for the 2014-15 academic year and will play football. GMC coach Bert Williams said that Custis’ intent is to return to Tech, which could happen by the end of the 2015 spring semester.
“We’ve got some things we’ve got to get squared away, obviously, before he can get back up there, and we have had pretty good success getting that done,” Williams said.
If that were to happen, he would have three seasons of eligibility remaining. Custis’ initial entry to Tech was delayed by a semester when he did not enroll in the fall of 2013 because of NCAA academic clearinghouse issues.
Hunt-Days and Custis are rarities as Tech players to get tripped up by academic issues. On Wednesday, the football team earned commendation from the NCAA for having an Academic Progress Rate score in the top 10 percent of FBS teams.
The losses follow the abrupt departures of former special-teams coordinator David Walkosky on May 2 and director of player personnel Matt Griffin earlier this week. A brief news release from the athletic department Friday offered a sliver of insight into the situation. The release provided confirmation that Griffin “is no longer associated with the program” and that Walkosky “has resigned his coaching position to pursue other opportunities.”
