Pot Brownies, Da'Rick Garcia, and the SEC East's Descent In to Awfulness
The SEC East is like the younger, drug-addled underachieving brother of a Rhodes Scholar. The Billy Beer of SEC football.
While the SEC West gets stronger every year and racks up title after title, the SEC East continues to fall all over itself with incompetence. At this point the SEC East coaches are like bad reality TV characters, the Desperate Housewives of the (mostly) eastern time zone.
What do Derek Dooley, Mark Richt, Will Mushamp, and Joker Phillips have in common?
One of these guys is better than half the division coaches.
If Steve Spurrier was a decade younger, he'd stop conducting practice shirtless and run his program from the golf course.
Even now the younger guys can't keep up with him.
Consider just what has happened today at two erstwhile powers, Georgia and Tennessee. Bacarri Rambo, a Georgia All-American safety, is suspended four games. According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution this means 28 otherwise eligible Georgia Bulldog signees are no longer with the program.
Rambo's high school coach's explanation for what happened?
Really.
"Rambo tested positive after eating some brownies that he did not realize contained marijuana during a spring break trip with friends to Panama City, Fla., according to Ingram, who has talked to Rambo.
“Some kids had them that were staying with him and he said he got high,” Ingram said. “He thought the things had marijuana in them. He sat there a couple of hours and didn’t know what to do. He said he if he turned himself in he’d get a four-game suspension for a second offense.”
Pot brownies on spring break?
You can't even make this stuff up. (Although, it's worth asking, who goes to Spring Break in Panama City and brings regular brownies? Shouldn't you be a little suspicious? I can hear Rambo now: "I had no idea the jello shots had alcohol in them!")
At least you can always count on the Georgia Bulldogs for two things:
1. UGA dying too soon.
2. Player suspensions to start the season.
Meanwhile up in Knoxville -- Dukes of Hazzard narrator voice -- Derek Dooley's best returning healthy offensive weapon, all SEC receiver Da'Rick Rogers, has gone off the grid.
Amidst the fourth double-secret probation/suspension of Roger's career that for some reason Dooley will not call either, Rogers skipped out on spring practice today, Tweeted hello to Georgia State, and said last night that today he would talk to the media and tell his side of the story.
His side of the story would sound something like this: "Awwwwww, man." (And would probably be told from a hot tub surrounded by high school girls in bikinis.)
In case you can't tell, I love Da'Rick Rogers.
This afternoon Rogers spoke of transferring telling Scout's Georgia State reporter "it would be the only place I'd look at." (Presumably he means after the preposition).
It's gotten so bad for Dool-Aid drinkers that Dooley's press conferences now lead to him being informed that one of his best players is transferring and Dooley responds, "Nobody told me that."
Are we sure anyone has actually told you that you're the coach, Derek?
Because as dysfunctional as UT athletics has become, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Dooley just showed up on his own and started "coaching" the team. (Coaching is in quotation marks here because when you lose to a Kentucky team starting a wide receiver at quarterback, I'm not sure what you're actually doing in all that time.)
Somewhere Stephen Garcia is reading this article with a cigarette dangling from his trembling lower lip, alcohol oozing from his pores, envious of Da'Rick's poise: "Electronic fist bump, bro."
In fact, it's time for Da'Rick to change his last name to Garcia. (That's him on the right leaving jail after his first arrest and suspension.)
If this SEC East mini-drama doesn't come full circle with Da'Rick Rogers and Stephen Garcia giving up football and teaming together to buy Spinnaker's on Panama City Beach, I'm going to be disappointed.
And Georgia and Tennessee are two of the SEC East's traditional powers!
Toss in Gary Pinkel's jumbo wine glass DUI arrest, Will Muschamp's continuing descent in to Gainesville heat-infused madness -- it's possible the Florida offense this season will feature first down punts --, the fact that even Kentucky fans are disgusted with Joker Phillips, Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt!, having to do investigations of improper transfer tampering, and you're talking about a colossal football pile-up.
Remember when Steve Spurrier was the crazy one?
Hell, Spurrier's the least crazy coach in the SEC East and he's got a full Augusta fairway's distance between him and second place.
And even Spurrier's team is on probation because everyone was sleeping in hotel suites for a year.
Even Lindsay Lohan is like, "You've totally got issues."
There's only one logical conclusion to this mess: Lane Kiffin is going to show up with a plate of brownies at the SEC spring meetings.
Whatever you do, SEC East coaches, don't eat Lane Kiffin's brownies!
But they all will.
And an entire division's coaches are going to test positive for pot.
Good luck unraveling that mess, Commissioner Slive.