All of it left Gators coaches, players and parents to contemplate a day in which a football field had become a crime scene and their season suspended for one game. The team would soon be fined $1,000 by the league for failure to control coaches and supporters.
But more than any of that, the Gators wrestled with what to make of a man who had contributed so much and now emerged as more - or less - than what they imagined, a supposed role model who might have been anything but.
The widely reported incident heightened anxiety among parents in the Baltimore area and around the country about the need for better background checks to weed out unfit coaches.
To those who know McCown, the issue was more personal. Some wondered why a man who implored kids to stay out of trouble couldn't manage to negotiate that path himself.
But McCown's story raises more intriguing questions.
Hundreds of Baltimoreans lurch in and out of prison. Very few of them feel impelled to return week after week, year after year to a worn football field to try to better the lives of kids in East Baltimore.
Why did Aaron McCown?
And why was he so welcomed there?
A few good men
On this October night, the Gators make their own light.
The city has no field lights where the Gators practice. Their coach is in jail, but the playoffs are approaching, and the team has to prepare.
So a half-hour after sunset, several cars drive onto the field and park at odd angles with their headlights on. The players re-orient passing drills so they are in the paths of the beams.
More than lights, the Gators need coaches. So do all the teams in the Maryland Football and Cheerleading Association, which includes the Baltimore and Washington areas and is affiliated with Pop Warner. "It's hard to get quality guys that want to put in the time," said Mike Wills, football director of White Oak.
Wills regularly resorts to buying ads looking for coaches. "Seeking Dedicated Volunteers for the 2008 Season!" the current one reads.
The problem is particularly acute in East Baltimore, where there is a shortage of men, period. Thirty-six percent of the homes in the 21213 ZIP code are headed by a woman with no spouse present - a figure five times as high as some other areas in the state, according to the Census Bureau.
