College football players being arrested on public intoxication charges isn’t new, but the way that Iowa defensive tackle Brady Reiff pulled it off was pretty funny. As per Kat Russell of Cedar Rapids paper The Gazette, Reiff was arrested early Saturday morning after repeatedly trying to climb into a university police car, which he told officers he thought was an Uber:
Accused of public intoxication, Brady Reiff, 22, a starting defensive tackle for the UI football team, approached a parked UI police cruiser on Iowa Avenue at about 2 a.m. and attempted to open the vehicle’s passenger door, according to UI police.
When Reiff noticed there was a rider sitting in the passenger seat, police said he moved to the back door and attempted to open it.
When asked what he was doing, police said Reiff asked for a ride home. “He thought that was our job,” the police report states.
When asked if he thought the vehicle was an Uber, police said Reiff replied “Yes.”
According to the arrest report, a breathalyzer test showed Reiff’s blood alcohol content was .204 — more than twice the legal limit if he were driving — at the time of his arrest.
At least that’s a pretty low-impact way to get arrested, and it’s far from the worst thing you can do drunk. And Reiff was responsible enough to try to get a ride home. He was just very bad at identifying that particular ride. (And hey, maybe that is one advantage to traditional, well-labeled taxis.) But Reiff was held for the rest of the night and released at 9:30 a.m., so he had plenty of time to mull his mistake.
The 6-foot-3, 272-pound Reiff is a redshirt junior who appeared in 12 games for the Hawkeyes last year as a rotational defensive tackle, putting up 12 tackles, a sack and a pass deflection. He was also named to the Academic All-Big Ten Team, apparently thanks to not taking classes that involved distinguishing between ride-sharing services and police cars. He’s listed as a backup on Iowa’s preseason depth chart, but won’t be in their first game; head coach Kirk Ferentz said Monday Reiff will be suspended for that clash against Northern Illinois. Maybe he can use that time to work on identifying Uber vehicles versus police cars.
[The Gazette; image from a 2015 YouTube video celebrating Iowa recruits]
