Last week, Mississippi State experienced the worst of what college spring break can offer.

A few members of the MSU football team, including reigning first-team All-SEC quarterback Dak Prescott, traveled down to Panama City Beach, Florida, for some fun in the sun with fellow college students from across the country.

Unfortunately, the trip took a turn for the worse at a hip hop concert last Monday, where Prescott and a couple of teammates were physically assaulted in the parking lot at the show.

Thanks to the current age of social media, most of the incident was caught on camera and uploaded to the Internet soon after. Prescott was visibly bloodied and, frankly, lucky to not have suffered more severe injuries.

The players made the wise decision to return home to Starkville later that night and opted not to press charges. Ultimately, it could have been a lot worse.

But those are the issues college spring break presents. It’s a mass amount of 20-something college students drinking way too much while crammed into way too small of a space. It’s the party scene of the year for kids that age, and it’s no surprise reckless events take place like the incident involving Prescott.

While we don’t know for certain how the altercation began, and we may never know, let’s get one thing clear: Prescott is not a bad person.

This incident was not the result of his own poor decision-making, or at least his reputation leads us to believe so. Since the end of the college football season he’s made the tough decision to stay in school and finish his college degree in lieu of entering the NFL, and he’s spoken to high school students encouraging them to value a college education just as much.

He does not have a checkered past or a long history of legal troubles. For all intents and purposes, he’s a good kid. But even he couldn’t avoid the mess that college spring break can present.

College athletes, especially SEC football players, are celebrities. They simply can’t just hit the beach in Florida and expect to be treated like every other student on spring break. You’ll never see a professional athlete just walk into a crowded nightclub with a couple buddies and no security. That’s a stupid risk once you reach a certain level of recognition. College athletes must follow the same rule.

And you can’t exactly send coaches along to babysit the players. There’s too much going on and too many people. It’s simply not realistic.

But spring break is an annual occurrence on nearly every college campus, and there’s no avoiding it. And to be fair, the kids deserve a break. They face tremendous pressure academically and an even greater pressure on the football field, and as a result they deserve to enjoy their week off.

Which is why college coaches need to begin taking it upon themselves to use spring break constructively.

Related: Nick Chubb using spring break to improve physically

While Prescott was being bloodied at Panama City Beach, Ole Miss head coach Hugh Freeze was on a mission trip to Haiti, and he brought new quarterback transfer Chad Kelly along to provide him with a better, safer spring break alternative.

Unlike Prescott, Kelly, the nephew of NFL Hall of Famer Jim Kelly and former Clemson Tigers signee, does have a checkered past. Behavioral issues cost him his spot on Clemson’s roster, and he found himself in greater legal troubles in his hometown of Buffalo, New York, just four days after signing with Ole Miss out of East Mississippi Community College.

Freeze never allowed Kelly to face the potential risks spring break in Florida can present. Instead, he removed him from Oxford and gave him an opportunity to broaden his horizons, grow and mature as a man and, most importantly, stay away from temptations stateside.

Fair or unfair, Kelly has shown he still cannot be trusted with the full freedom granted to some other college athletes. Freeze’s move to bring him to Haiti was brilliant, and it could go a long way toward Kelly not only earning the starting quarterback job, but succeeding in it.

To be reasonable, not every coach will have a chance to travel overseas on a goodwill trip with his players, but there are similar alternatives coaches can turn to stateside.

Travel to do charity work or community service in an impoverished community in the U.S. Work with inner-city communities and perhaps give the players a chance to see that city’s tourist attractions while on the trip. Allow the kids to work and grow from the experience, but sprinkle in the well-deserved elements of a vacation as well.

Just don’t let them go drink their livers rotten on a beach in Florida with a bunch of equally drunk kids who know exactly who they are. The odds are steep that something bad will take place.

In the aftermath of Prescott’s incident, other college athletes have taken notice, including some of the stars of the Alabama football program. The Tide briefly opened its spring practice season last Friday before breaking for a week and a half for Alabama’s spring break.

“That can happen to anybody,” linebacker Reggie Ragland told College Football Talk. “I felt bad for (Prescott), sorry that it happened to him and a couple of guys that he was with, but I can’t say that it might happen to me. … If you’re going down (to Florida), don’t do nothing crazy, just be respectful to everyone.”

Is it fair to say a player like Prescott can’t experience spring break like his fellow collegiate counterparts? No. But is Prescott absolutely on another tier of stardom than the average college student? Of course. He lives by a different code. He is a college student, but in another sense entirely he’s not.

If more coaches follow Freeze’s lead and provide a fun and constructive outlet for spring break, it could wind up benefitting the players involved, even if those players miss out on the chance to recant wild spring break tales for years to come.

Something tells me those players would rather tell stories of their gridiron glory anyway.