When the athletic director of a major university gets arrested for DUI, it’s embarrassing for all parties involved.
When the athletic director of a major university gets arrested for DUI, bargains with the police officer to let him go, is riding with a younger women who isn’t his wife in the car and also has her underwear on his lap at the top of being pulled over, it’s really, really embarrassing.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has the details of Georgia athletic director Damon Evans’ June 30th DUI arrest:
Evans, who admitted to drinking three Vodka cocktails, began bargaining with the trooper as soon as he realized he might be placed under arrest. “I am not trying to bribe you but I’m the athletic director of the University of Georgia,” Evans said.
The arrest report, released at 4:55 p.m. Friday of a holiday weekend, reveals several embarrassing details for the 40-year-old Evans, whose lucrative new 5-year contract went into effect Thursday.
The passenger in Evans’ car, 28-year-old Courtney Fuhrmann, was being “very loud and obnoxious and was obviously intoxicated,” Cabe wrote. She repeatedly got out of the car, ignoring the trooper’s instructions, before she was handcuffed and charged with disorderly conduct, according to the incident report.
“I apologize and don’t want to use my influence but she is trying to protect me,” Evans told Cabe. Furmann remained “combative,” the trooper wrote, and after Evans refused to take a breath test he was arrested.
Wait, the story gets better.
The trooper, who noted that Evans had a pair of red panties between his legs, asked the athletic director “what her panties were doing in his side of the seat. He stated, ‘She took them off and I held them because I was just trying to get her home.’ ”
Evans told the trooper “there was nothing there” between him and the Buckhead woman “because he had a wife and family.”
Evans appeared relaxed when first stopped by the trooper. “I feel pretty good,” he told the trooper, then “smiled and laughed for no apparent reason.” Cabe said Evans had “red, bloodshot, watery eyes and droopy eyelids” and he detected “a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage.”
The Nebraska native asked the trooper to let him off with a warning.
“I told him I don’t issue warnings for DUI,” Cabe replied.
Evans tried again: “I don’t want you to use who I am but I would just ask that you take me to a motel.”
After he was arrested, the father of two — who refused a Breathalyzer — told the trooper, “We go through life and we all drink and jump in a car.”
As if things weren’t bad enough for Evans, he was the one who also did a DUI prevention public service announcement video that ran throughout Sanford Stadium during Georgia home football games last year.
Everyone makes mistakes, but I don’t see how Evans can keep his job after this. Georgia showed video of this guy telling thousands of students last year not to drink and drive and then he gets busted for the same crime. He looks like a giant hypocrite and I wonder what would happen if a student athlete were to be arrested for the same thing. What kind of punishment would he face? Would he be allowed to stay on the team?
Maybe UGA will stand by Evans and set an example that people deserve second chances. But the details of this situation might be too embarrassing for the university to allow him to keep his job. Not only was he driving drunk, but he was also riding around with a chick’s panties between his legs. Oh, and he’s married with two children and the women he was traveling with wasn’t his wife.
Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes.
