I gave the University of Virginia and UVA Athletics an opportunity to show a shred of human compassion for the victim in the case in which UVA Football wideout Jahmal Edrine has been charged with rape and abduction.
No dice.
I reached out to both entities today to offer the chance for “a comment that shows any sense of human compassion from the University and UVA Athletics for the victim in this case.”
Because there is a victim in this case.
We don’t know yet if Jahmal Edrine, the accused, is the perpetrator; that’s up, theoretically, for a judge or jury to decide, if this one doesn’t end, as so many criminal cases do, in a plea agreement.
The presumption that Edrine is innocent until proven guilty doesn’t mean that the victim isn’t a victim.
A grand jury agrees that something bad happened on the night of Aug. 24, 2025.
ICYMI
It wouldn’t hurt UVA’s reputation to acknowledge at least that – that something bad happened.
“As a UVA alum, I was dismayed that nothing of that sort has been offered at this stage,” I wrote in an email to the University’s PR folks on Friday.
The response:
“Thanks for following up, Chris. We can’t offer further comment at this time since the investigation remains ongoing.”
This was from Bethanie Glover in University Communications.
I would not want her job, for all the money in the world.
What we know; what we don’t know
Edrine was indicted by an Albemarle County grand jury on Monday, in connection with a reported rape and abduction that we’re told took place on Aug. 24, 2025, six days before the UVA Football season opener.
The incident, per the Albemarle County Police Department, was reported to police on Aug. 25 – the Monday of the first game week for UVA Football in the 2025 season, ahead of the Saturday, Aug. 30, season opener with Coastal Carolina, a 48-7 Virginia win, in which Edrine had three catches, including a TD catch.
I tried today to get, from the University and UVA Athletics, a sense of when head football coach Tony Elliott and the athletics director, Carla Williams, were made aware of the investigation into the matter.
The response: see above, the folks over there are saying they can’t address it.
In the absence of them saying anything on the record, it’s hard to believe that either the AD or the coach wouldn’t have been made aware of the existence of an investigation into one of their student-athletes either:
- directly, by the Albemarle County Police Department, as a routine matter of course, as investigators began to conduct interviews of Edrine’s acquaintances and staffers who had regular contact with him about his whereabouts on Aug. 24, and his frame of mind after the alleged incident;
- or indirectly, as word of what may or may not have happened circulated around the locker room and the football ops center, and made its way up the chain.
The ACPD won’t discuss details on its work on the case, either, but it stands to reason that the investigators didn’t let this one sit through the entirety of the football season before doing the routine things like collecting evidence, e.g., let’s presume, a rape kit, and beginning the interview process, with the victim, the alleged perp, and those who could serve as alibi or corroborating witnesses.
Given just basic process, it strains credulity that UVA Athletics found out, for the first time, that Edrine had been the focus of an investigation when the rest of us did, at 5:09 p.m. on Thursday, with the media release from the ACPD announcing Edrine’s arrest going out.
That said, we know nothing, in terms of who knew what, when.
Personal note
I would love to find out that what a lot of us are supposing right now – that the people who should have known, did, and acted to make sure the interests of the football team were considered above all else – is wrong.
I desperately want to have the sick pit in my stomach, that I not only foolishly rooted for wins for a football team, but in my case, as a journalist, devoted countless thousands of words to telling you how great it was, break down and leave.
And I’m not alone there.
I’ve been hearing from fellow alums and long-time UVA Athletics fans who, like me, are struggling to make sense of the story.
Some of the opinions on the story that have been coming my way:
- “This story made me sick to my stomach. Definitely takes some of the shine off of last season.”
- “Cannot believe a detective working the case would not have come to the coaches or school to get some information on him, or players. Seems weird that they did not charge him right away.”
- “Win or lose, I almost always feel that UVA does things the right way, but this is a sour taste.”
Transparency
There’s obvious value to transparency; but then, not seeing the value to being up front on an uncomfortable news story is normal UVA PR practice.
The “ongoing investigation” excuse is a favorite one that the University loves to trot out; think back to the two reports commissioned to review the Nov. 13, 2022, mass shooting that took the lives of three UVA Football players.
The reports, once submitted to the University, sat on a shelf for a year and a half, under the “ongoing investigation” rubric; and when UVA finally released them, last March, the redactions make the DOJ’s “release” of the Epstein files look like full and unequivocal transparency.
ICYMI
The approach over there is based on the thinking, we run this town, we have more money than god, and, seriously, what are you going to do – submit a FOIA request?
Virginia’s FOIA law has loopholes that government agencies routinely cite to withhold information from requesters big enough to drive an 18-wheeler through.
For that matter, you might remember the reporting that I did last summer about UVA Athletics trying to sweep under the rug how an assistant swim coach, Gary Taylor, had accepted a two-year probation from the U.S. Center for SafeSport after admitting to emotional misconduct of athletes at NC State, Auburn and Cavalier Aquatics, the competitive swim team at the Piedmont Family YMCA in Charlottesville.
ICYMI
Let me clarify: not only did UVA Athletics think the probation would get swept under the rug, but Taylor was actually given a contract extension two weeks after SafeSport put him on probation.
If that ain’t a double-middle-finger salute to the value of the investigatory process, well.
How this plays out from here
It’s pretty clear, in the Jahmal Edrine case, how it harms the public image of UVA Athletics and UVA Football that we don’t know what the coach and the AD knew, and when they knew it.
Because it sure does look, at the moment, that the kid was involved in a violent incident that, eventually, got him indicted by a grand jury, that folks in high places would have had to have known, and that they shrugged, in favor of making the football team more competitive.
Maybe they hoped it would blow over, and just misread the situation – which is why it was made to be big news last month that Edrine was returning for a grad-senior season; and why Elliott, on Wednesday, on the eve of Edrine’s arrest, was praising the kid up and down for being a hard worker.
You can read that as, they didn’t know; it can also be read as, they knew, but thought, well, the PD didn’t make an arrest, so …
Guidance from me on how this is going to play out from here is informed from my read of the fallout, lack thereof, from UVA’s efforts to put the 2022 shooting reports under wraps, and the move to extend the contract of the assistant swim coach.
No one else in the local media is going to challenge the University on this, because the local media doesn’t want to bite the hand that feeds them.
I’ll write a few more stories and columns, but none of them will be informed by anything substantive, because anything remotely substantive on this case is never going to see the light of day.
By the start of spring practice, in six weeks, the stories you read on UVA Football from other outlets – the ones with writers who refer to us as “fringe media” – will be teary-eyed reminisces of the historic 2025 season.
Their pieces on the Edrine case will be sparsely reported, and given bland headlines, so as not to entice you to click.
That’s how UVA gets bad news to blow over.
I mean, it’s an art form, to be admired.
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Chris Graham
