Reserve DL latest UGA player cited for speeding

Alex Scarborough, ESPN Staff WriterJul 28, 2023, 11:39 PM ET
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- Covers the SEC.
- Joined ESPN in 2012.
- Graduate of Auburn University.

Georgia defensive lineman Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins was cited for speeding earlier this week as at least a dozen Bulldogs players now have been charged with moving violations since the team won the national championship in January.

Major Chris Looney of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office told the Athens Banner-Herald that Ingram-Dawkins was clocked going 90 miles per hour in a 70 mph zone Monday.

The redshirt sophomore was then brought in on a warrant for previously failing to appear in court over a citation of parking in a handicapped zone. He was booked in Clarke County Jail before being released on bond, according to the Banner-Herald.

Ingram-Dawkins was a reserve defensive lineman in 2022, playing in 14 games and making 10 total stops.

Only a week earlier, Georgia coach Kirby Smart addressed his team’s speeding issues at SEC media days in Nashville, Tennessee, saying he was “disappointed” by the number of traffic tickets among his players.

Smart said they had brought in police to speak to the team and had started a system of “checks and balances” for self-reporting speeding tickets. So-called “super speeders” are disciplined, according to the coach, by losing achievement-based monetary awards.

“I’m not going to eradicate speeding,” Smart told ESPN, “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. 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.”

Asked by ESPN whether he was confident that players have been receptive to his message about the dangers of speeding, Smart said, “I’m not confident in that. I’m not. I mean they’re in cars that are faster than they’ve been. They go, they get up and go faster than they ever have. I’m confident in the education that we’re doing.”

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.”

On Jan. 15, the night of Georgia’s championship celebration, 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, traveling more than 100 mph, left the road and slammed into power poles and trees.