ORLANDO, Fla. _ The group of Gainesville men involved in a May 28 confrontation with UF football players included an alleged gambler who was friends with Gators' tight end C'yontai Lewis.
The relationship between Lewis and 21-year-old Gainesville resident Devante Zachery, known as "Tay Bang," turned sour when Zachery became critical, even insulting, after losing money on bets he placed on last season's 4-7 Gators.
The rift between Lewis, along with his teammates, and Zachery and his friends led to several confrontations between February and July.
During UF's Media Day Thursday, Dan Mullen was asked if he was concerned some of his players were associated with an alleged gambler. NCAA rules forbid college athletes from placing sports wagers or providing information about their teams to anyone whose does bet on sports.
"That's something we'd look into right there," Mullen said. "I'll be honest with you; they just made sports gambling legal across America, so there's obviously a lot of gamblers in the United States of America. There might be a bunch in this room right here, and I'm associating with you today.
"That would be something we'd investigate or look into and the severity of it."
Mullen went on to say he and staff strive to educate players to have positive associations away from the team.
"We're always concerned for our players of who they associate with in every aspect of their life," Mullen said. "I've heard a lot of successful people tell you, you want to judge a successful person, show me their friends."
Pressed by one reporter about what he found out about his players' association with Zachery, Mullen replied, "If we find something, we'll let you know."
Besides Zachery's alleged gambling interests, he told Gainesville Police he used to provide rental car discounts to players when he worked for a local Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
Mullen said he reported the matter to UF's compliance office.
"Any time we hear _ no matter who a source is or credibility of sources even, any time we hear any of those things, we look into all of that," Mullen said. "Jamie McCloskey does a great job, our compliance department, our administration does a great job. Those things happen probably more often maybe than people even think they happen.
"As soon as we hear about something, we go through the channels, we report it, and our compliance office immediately begins to look into situations to see what happened."
