Warszawski: DeRuyter’s decision whether to suspend Greenlee will be telling

This is on you, Coach. Time to make an executive decision. Fresno State fans await your leadership on this matter.

I’m not saying others won’t be involved, but whether Zack Greenlee starts, plays or even suits up for Saturday’s Mountain West Conference football opener against San Jose State will essentially be the call of one person: Tim DeRuyter.

It’s a decision unlike any DeRuyter has faced during his four seasons as a head coach in college football. This will be a lot more telling than whether the Bulldogs pass or run on third-and-2.

Greenlee, as you probably heard, got arrested early Sunday morning, hours after Fresno State’s 45-24 loss to Utah, for being drunk and disorderly. The sophomore wasn’t the only Bulldogs athlete cited (and the charges against him are less serious than those that linebacker Brandon Hughes and women’s soccer player Fanny Johansson are facing), but Greenlee is the headline grabber. He’s the quarterback.

For the Bulldogs and their coach, the timing stinks. News of Greenlee’s arrest started to spread only minutes after DeRuyter announced during his Monday morning news conference that freshman quarterback Chason Virgil was lost for the season with a broken clavicle.

Interestingly, DeRuyter broke the Virgil injury news himself. He volunteered the information before anyone got around to asking the question. He made no mention of Greenlee’s arrest and answered questions about the Bulldogs’ quarterback situation as if Greenlee would start.

DeRuyter missed a chance to get out ahead of a negative story he surely knew was coming. When it did, he issued a vague statement saying he was “aware of the incident” and would “withhold further comment until the investigative process plays out.”

I went out to practice Monday afternoon to get DeRuyter to elaborate. He answered my questions but wasn’t really in the elaborating mood.

Does there have to be some sort of punishment for Greenlee, given that he’s under legal drinking age and in violation of the university’s student-athlete code of conduct?

“There will be discipline associated with this if we feel it’s appropriate and once we find out everything,” DeRuyter replied.

How much will Virgil’s injury play into that decision, given that you could wind up with neither of your co-starting quarterbacks?

“That’s totally separate situations …”

You’ve always stressed character. Doesn’t that force your hand a little?

“Every situation is different,” DeRuyter said. “Sometimes the headlines are much more salacious than what actually happened. I’m not saying that’s the case here, but we have to do the investigation.”

If you’re expecting me to play morality police, sorry to disappoint. Every weekend, thousands of college students across the Valley consume alcohol at house parties, and many of those kids are underage. From what I’ve read and heard, nothing particularly egregious took place at this one.

Certainly, Greenlee gets held to a different standard. He’s not only a Bulldogs student-athlete, he’s the starting quarterback. You’d also expect the starting quarterback would be smart enough to avoid these situations.

Because Greenlee is a few months shy of his 21st birthday, and because Fresno State has a special set of rules for athletes, I would expect some form of suspension.

The question is whether it’s for one game, one half, one set of downs, or something more severe.

There’s no real benchmark here. A couple weeks ago, a BYU player blatantly punched an opponent in the nether region – an offense I’d consider worse than a 20-year-old drinking a few beers – and got off scot-free.

No one looks to sportswriters to provide leadership in these situations (thank goodness), but they do look to football coaches.

If Greenlee is allowed to start Saturday and play the entire game as if nothing happened, it would be more than fair to question whether DeRuyter places winning over character, rules and holding players accountable.

But if Greenlee sits, even for a half, there’s a much greater chance the Bulldogs lose to San Jose State. Which, frankly, would be devastating to DeRuyter’s oft-stated goal of playing for the Mountain West Conference championship.

College football coaches get paid as much as they do in part because of decisions like these. In some ways, it’s the toughest of DeRuyter’s tenure here.

This one’s on him.

This story was originally published September 21, 2015 at 6:38 PM with the headline "Warszawski: DeRuyter’s decision whether to suspend Greenlee will be telling."