Ray Ray Armstrong returned to practice with the Miami Hurricanes Monday, having been banned from all team activities the previous week for having dinner with a public relations firm owner.
Though the Canes' safety was reinstated, he still may not play with the team at USF on Saturday. Head coach Al Golden said "the AD [Shawn Eichorst] is going to have the final say" as to whether Armstrong will suit up against the Bulls.
Armstrong went out to dinner with Ari Washington, a friend who owns a PR firm that deals with pro athletes, on Saturday. Both he and Washington tweeted about the dinner, triggering alarms at UM's compliance office.
Not wishing to have the faintest whiff of scandal around UM, the team suspended Armstrong soon thereafter, not allowing him to participate in any team activities until the university could be sure that no NCAA violations occurred.
Golden expressed disappointment with Armstrong on Monday. "I'll tell you what I shared with him," he told the Miami Herald. "How about, what we endured as a staff, or what my family went through during that whole deal."
"You know, we're humans," he continued. "It's not just, 'Hey, Coach is hard and Coach doesn't understand my emotions.' It's like, 'How could you do that?'"
Golden was unapologetic about suspending a defensive starter for the Florida State game, saying there is a "fine balance between being an educator and having zero tolerance."
"We're going to fight like heck" to get those incidents out of the team's system, Golden concluded.
A decision on Armstrong's status for Saturday's game is expected later this week.
