The Recent UAB Incident and a Troubling History
In the early morning hours of November 22, 2025, the University of Alabama at Birmingham campus became the latest site of a shocking reality in college sports: This time, violence between teammates at the Football Operations Building. UAB offensive lineman Daniel Mincey (Pompano Beach, Florida) allegedly stabbed two of his fellow football players just hours before their scheduled game against the University of South Florida. The victims survived and were reported in stable condition, but the incident sent shockwaves through the college sports community—and raised urgent questions about whether universities are doing enough to prevent such tragedies.
This wasn’t an isolated incident. The UAB stabbing follows a disturbing pattern of athlete-on-athlete violence that has plagued college sports programs, including high-profile cases at the University of Virginia and the University of Miami in recent years.
A Pattern We Can No Longer Ignore
The University of Virginia community was devastated in November 2022 when former football player Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. shot and killed three players—Lavel Davis Jr., D’Sean Perry, and Devin Chandler—on a charter bus returning from a class field trip. Two others were wounded in the attack that shocked the nation and led to extensive soul-searching about warning signs that may have been missed. In a recent judgement handed down, Judge Cheryl Higgins sentenced Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. to the maximum allowable penalty of five life sentences, plus 23 years.
At the University of Miami, multiple incidents over the years have involved violence between players or former players, highlighting systemic issues within high-pressure athletic environments. None more prominent that the horrid story where former University of Miami football player Rashaun Jones was arrested in 2021 for the 2006 murder of his teammate, Bryan Pata. Pata was shot and killed outside his apartment after football practice, and Jones was charged with second-degree murder, later pleading not guilty. This case is still ongoing.
These cases share troubling commonalities: young men in highly competitive, physically demanding environments; potential mental health struggles; secret lives; conflicts that escalated beyond normal teammate disputes; and institutional structures that may not have adequately identified or addressed warning signs.
The Unique Pressures of College Athletics
To understand this pattern, we must first acknowledge the extraordinary pressures facing college athletes. These young people, many still teenagers, face:
Intense physical demands: Football players endure brutal training regimens and game-day violence that can affect mental health and emotional regulation.
Academic pressure: Despite their athletic commitments, they’re expected to maintain academic performance, often while dealing with learning differences or inadequate academic preparation.
Social isolation: The time demands of Division I athletics can isolate players from the broader campus community, creating insular social environments where conflicts have nowhere to diffuse.
Identity struggles: For many athletes, sports define their entire self-worth. Injuries, performance slumps, or playing time disputes can trigger existential crises.
Financial stress: Despite recent NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) opportunities, many college athletes still struggle financially while generating millions for their institutions. Many come from meager backgrounds with limited ongoing financial support while on scholarship.
Transition difficulties: Players who transfer between programs, like Mincey from Kentucky to UAB, face additional adjustment challenges—new systems, new relationships, lack of acceptance, and the pressure to prove themselves all over again.
What the Research Tells Us
Studies on violence in athletics consistently point to several risk factors that appear present in many of these cases. Research has found that contact sport athletes may experience higher rates of aggression-related issues, though the vast majority never become violent. Traumatic brain injuries and repeated subconcussive hits—routine in football—can affect impulse control and emotional regulation. Mental health conditions, particularly depression and anxiety, are significantly underdiagnosed and undertreated in college athlete populations, partly due to stigma within sports culture that equates mental health struggles with weakness.
Furthermore, conflicts within team environments can escalate quickly when combined with other stressors, and young adults aged 18-25 are already at elevated risk for impulsive behavior and poor decision-making as their brains complete development.
The Hazing Connection: A Culture of Normalized Violence
Perhaps most troubling is what research reveals about hazing’s role in normalizing violence and abuse within athletic teams. Approximately 80 percent of college athletes report being subjected to questionable or unacceptable initiation activities, yet only 12 percent identify these experiences as hazing. This disconnect reveals how deeply normalized these practices have become.
The normalization of hazing creates what researchers call a “violence climate” within teams. When athletes are regularly subjected to humiliation, physical abuse, or psychological manipulation as part of “team building,” the boundaries of acceptable behavior become dangerously blurred. Initiation practices and hierarchical dynamics create environments where violence becomes routinized rather than shocking.
Research shows hazing reinforces power hierarchies and teaches troubling lessons about dominance. Senior athletes may use hazing against less experienced players to reassert their status and authority, creating cycles where those who were hazed later become hazers themselves. Significantly, studies have found that a notable percentage of those hazed wanted revenge as a result of what they experienced, suggesting hazing breeds resentment and aggression rather than the team cohesion it supposedly promotes.
Particularly concerning is how hazing affects emotional regulation and conflict resolution. Research indicates that hazers often have aggressive dispositions, struggle with power relationships, and use violence as an outlet. When young athletes are socialized into environments where abuse is normalized, humiliation is routine, and dominance is rewarded, they may lack the skills to handle conflicts constructively when they arise.
The “code of silence” surrounding hazing mirrors the underreporting we see in violent incidents. Between 60 and 95 percent of athletes who were victims of hazing explicitly stated they would not report it, citing allegiance to teammates, unclear reporting channels, and the normalization of such behavior. This same culture of silence can allow interpersonal conflicts to fester unaddressed until they explode into violence.
Despite widespread belief that hazing builds team cohesion, research proves otherwise. Studies show that hazing actually diminishes group cohesion and undermines relationships between peers. Rather than creating unity, hazing may increase tensions and resentments that can later manifest as violent conflicts between teammates.
Where Systems Are Failing
The recurring nature of these incidents points to systemic failures across multiple levels. Many athletic departments have inadequate mental health resources relative to team sizes. According to NCAA data, the recommended ratio is one mental health professional for every 50 athletes, but many schools fall far short. Even when resources exist, the culture of toughness in football programs can discourage players from seeking help. Coaches may lack training to identify mental health warning signs or may prioritize performance over player welfare.
Transfer portal dynamics create additional complications. When players transfer between institutions, critical information about past behavioral concerns or mental health issues often doesn’t follow them due to privacy laws and liability concerns. This gap can leave receiving institutions blindsided.
Disciplinary systems also appear insufficient. Many universities rely on patchwork approaches to addressing player conflicts or concerning behavior, with athletic departments sometimes operating separately from campus-wide student conduct systems. This can result in warning signs being dismissed as “locker room issues” rather than serious threats.
The hazing blind spot: Perhaps most critically, many coaches and administrators remain unaware of antagonism, specifically, hazing’s prevalence or its dangers. Research indicates that approximately one in three coaches are aware of hazing rituals within their teams, but many feel ill-equipped to address them or believe that hazing is merely part of sport culture. The overwhelming majority of students believe that most people will not report hazing incidents. When institutional leaders either can’t see or won’t acknowledge the toxic culture created by hazing, they can’t address how that culture contributes to escalating violence.
Lessons We Must Learn
If we are to break this pattern of violence, several concrete changes must occur across college athletics:
Comprehensive mental health infrastructure: Every athletic program needs adequate, specialized mental health support. This means not just counselors, but professionals who understand the unique pressures of competitive athletics and can build trust within team cultures that traditionally stigmatize help-seeking.
Mandatory violence prevention training: All coaches, athletic staff, and athletes should receive regular training in conflict de-escalation, recognizing warning signs of violence, and understanding trauma’s effects on behavior. This cannot be a one-time orientation checkbox but an ongoing educational priority.
Better information sharing: Within the bounds of privacy law, universities need ethical frameworks for sharing relevant behavioral and mental health information when athletes transfer. Student safety must be balanced with privacy rights.
Cultural transformation: The broader culture of college football needs examination. When we glorify violence on the field, celebrate players who “play through pain,” and treat mental health as weakness, we create environments where violence can metastasize off the field.
Accountability and transparency: Universities must be transparent about how they handle behavioral incidents and must be held accountable when they fail to act on warning signs. Too often, institutional liability concerns supersede student safety.
Holistic player development: Athletes need support developing identities beyond sports, building conflict resolution skills, and preparing for life after athletics. Programs that treat players solely as performers rather than as developing human beings set them up for failure.
The Human Cost
Behind these incidents are devastating human consequences. At UVA, three promising young men lost their lives, leaving families shattered and a community traumatized. At UAB, two players were stabbed by someone who should have been their brother-in-arms. The alleged perpetrators, too, represent failures—young men whose struggles escalated to the point of irreversible actions that will define the rest of their lives.
These aren’t just statistics or case studies. They’re sons, teammates, classmates, and friends whose potential has been derailed by violence that likely could have been prevented.
Moving Forward
The decision by UAB’s coaching staff to play their game against USF hours after the stabbing—while understandable as a way to honor seniors—also reflects the “the show must go on” mentality that permeates college sports. Perhaps that mindset itself needs examination. When does resilience become denial? When does “playing through adversity” prevent necessary processing of trauma?
College athletics stands at a crossroads. These incidents can either be dismissed as isolated tragedies, unconnected to systemic issues, or they can serve as a catalyst for meaningful change. The pattern is clear enough that the latter choice is the only ethical option.
The NCAA, individual universities, and we as a society that celebrates and profits from college sports must ask difficult questions: What are we willing to change to keep these young people safe? How do we balance the competitive imperatives of athletics with the developmental needs of 18-to-22-year-olds? What responsibility do we bear for creating systems that may contribute to these tragedies?
The answers will require resources, cultural shifts, and uncomfortable conversations. But the cost of inaction—measured in lost lives, shattered futures, and traumatized communities—is far too high to continue with business as usual.
As investigations continue into the UAB incident, as the two victims recover, and as Daniel Mincey faces serious criminal charges, the broader college sports community must commit to more than thoughts and prayers. Real change requires real action. The question is whether we have the collective will to demand it.