Seahawks’ Jermaine Kearse calling penalties on students skipping school

OPI? More like CI ... confidential informant, that is.

You’d think Jermaine Kearse would want somebody to get away with mischief without being called for it every single time, but apparently the fifth-year Seattle Seahawks receiver has decided to team up with the officials by making penalty calls of his own.

As you may have heard on Brock & Salk Tuesday or read in the Seattle Times Monday, Kearse recently recorded notifications to send to parents of kids who miss classes at school as part of an autodial initiative by the Washington state superintendent.

Here’s a sample of the audio via the Times’s post:

Does it seem surprising Kearse would opt to be a snitch? He felt in November he was being unfairly targeted after being called for a league-leading six offensive pass interference penalties. And though he tied with DeAndre Hopkins with five such infractions accepted against him, that was still more than 29 other teams—I don’t have the splits for all those penalties but what’s most egregious is how many were off-the-ball calls you might expect to go unnoticed. Now Kearse is out here trying to spotlight kids breaking the rules—and even kids whose absences are excused(!), according to the report.

You might say Kearse isn’t really snitching since the phone calls only go out if the school already knows of the student’s absence—information Kearse presumably has no involvement in. But collaboration is still collaboration, don’t you think? A spokesman for the private group executing the state effort told the Times, “Anything with the Seahawks sells, so we figured this would catch them off guard.” But you expect a kid who gets caught is going to be stoked to have a favorite athlete carrying the message instead of an automated voice?

Then again, they say so far the only community to sign up for the service is Tumwater, a suburb of Olympia, so I guess most young Seattle fans don’t have too worry too hard that Kearse is looking over their shoulder, for now. As for Kearse, he can always make it up in the playoffs ... and maybe offer students a future chance to miss class by going to, say, a parade.