Barron Collier High School's head football coach was arrested on Saturday on driving under the influence charges, and the sheriff's office says the arrest report will not be public until Monday

Money & World

The Editorial Team · August 3, 2026

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Photo: RDNE Stock project / Pexels

What it changes

The confirmed facts here are narrow and it is worth holding them apart from the ones that are not yet established. The Collier County Sheriff's Office says it arrested Brannon Tidwell, 48, the head football coach at Barron Collier High School in Naples, on Saturday, on charges of driving under the influence and of refusing to submit to DUI testing. He posted bond and was released. That is the whole of what an authority has said, and this site is adding nothing to it. Everything past that point is either procedural or unknown. The most important thing for a reader to hold onto is that a charge is an accusation and not a finding. Tidwell has not been convicted of anything, no court has weighed any evidence, and the sheriff's office attaches that same caution to its own public arrest database, which states in its terms that the information it publishes has no connection to findings of guilt or innocence and does not reflect the final disposition of any charge. An arrest is the start of a process, not the end of one. The second point is that the documentary record is not public yet, and residents should expect the picture to fill in rather than assume it is complete. The sheriff's office told WINK News that the arrest report was not available on Sunday and that it expects to release it on Monday. Until that lands, there is no public account of what deputies say happened: no location, no time, no description of the stop, and no statement of what the refusal charge rests on. Florida treats refusal to submit to testing as a separate matter from the driving charge itself, with consequences that run through the driver licence system on their own track, which is part of why the report matters and why reading the two charges as one thing would be a mistake. The first court appearance is set for August 26, which is a long gap in a case of this kind and reflects the ordinary scheduling of a misdemeanour first appearance rather than anything particular to this one. The third point is the one Collier families will actually be asking about, and it is the one nobody has answered. Tidwell graduated from Barron Collier in 1996 and returned to lead its football program in 2025. Collier County Public Schools has said nothing about his status, and WINK reports it asked. There has been no announcement of a suspension, of administrative leave, or of any change to who is running the program, and the absence of a statement should not be read either as the district acting or as the district declining to act. Districts in this region have taken days to speak on personnel matters, and a school system that has not yet seen the arrest report has very little it can responsibly say. Parents looking for the district's position should watch for a statement from Collier County Public Schools rather than infer one, and the report's release on Monday is the next thing that will move this story.

The head football coach at Barron Collier High School in Naples was arrested on Saturday on driving under the influence charges, according to the Collier County Sheriff's Office.

The sheriff's office says Brannon Tidwell, 48, was arrested on a charge of driving under the influence and on a charge of refusing to submit to DUI testing. WINK News, whose reporter Hunter Walterman first reported the arrest on Sunday afternoon, reports that Tidwell later posted bond and was released.

No arrest report has been made public. The sheriff's office told WINK News that the report was not available on Sunday and that it expects to release it on Monday, so there is as yet no official account of where or when deputies say the stop occurred, or of what the refusal charge rests on.

The charges are allegations. Tidwell has not been convicted, and no court has yet considered the case. The sheriff's office says the same thing about its own public arrest records, whose published terms state that the information "has no connection to the findings of guilt or innocence or the acquittal or dismissal of a criminal charge" and "does not reflect the final disposition of any criminal charges."

Tidwell graduated from Barron Collier High School in 1996 and returned to lead the school's football program in 2025.

Collier County Public Schools has not said whether the arrest affects his position. WINK News reports that it contacted the district for comment, and that it also called Tidwell and did not immediately receive a response. No statement from either has been published.

Tidwell's first court appearance is scheduled for August 26.

Where we read it: Hunter Walterman at WINK News. Read their story.

The document: No public filing has been released.

Barron Collier High School's head football coach was arrested on Saturday on driving under the influence charges, and the sheriff's office says the arrest report will not be public until Monday

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