ANDIAMBRO.
When Chris Low is absolutely certain that Stephen Garcia showed up to a team meeting drunk, it is like a trauma surgeon saying that someone was "seriously injured," i.e. the usually cautious estimations of someone who only makes the most conservative evaluation of what is a serious situation. If Low says this:
According to several sources, Garcia showed up at Tuesday night’s SEC-mandated event acting boisterously, smelled of alcohol and later admitted to South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier that he’d had a few drinks prior to the event. His "excuse" was that he was celebrating teammate Kyle Nunn’s birthday.
...then Garcia fell into the meeting Indonesian Water Taxi Driver-level drunk to the point where it could not be hidden from you, us God, subsidiary deities, or any breathalyzer in any squad car within five miles. Google already knew this was coming, but South Carolina fans of a non-cheeky nature seem less than pleased, and in general are quite distraught over this and Garcia's disgracing of the Carolina name.
We would remind Carolina fans that Garcia is at worst the second or third best quarterback in the history of your program, took a flyer on your program at a time when other teams were very interested in having him start for them, and has done very little in the way of anything actually nasty or felonious. Dude likes beer, sweet, life-giving beer. At this point it's Stabler-esque in the charming way, not in the multiple DUI manner.
We would also remind you that every quarterback who ever played under Steve Spurrier has been on the verge of benching at every second of their tenure, so this does not represent a real diversion from the overall historical path of Spurrier quarterback management. If you look at it from a wagering perspective, Garcia will probably still end up being the starter at one point if he's not thrown off the team. He will likely not be thrown off the team because he's less malicious and more like the family Labrador who likes to drink beer out of his dog dish, and has one more year to show something like the kind of talent a typical Spurrier quarterback can deliver for NFL scouts: I am just good enough to earn my pension and then immediately retire after spending five years on the bench.
OH YOU TEASES. The most interesting bit from this is that Chris Rainey has been a good citizen and seems to be doing brilliant things out of the backfield with a running start and the ability to read cuts early. All this good behavior and niceness is just going to make the "Hey, remember that time he threatened to kill his girlfriend" shit all the more awkward this season if he has a massive breakout season. Thanks, universe!
In further Gator drooling, Ronald Powell at the hybrid end/LB position sounds like hell in cleats, and that is so, so pleasing to hear. AND LOL SURE WE'LL BUY TICKETS EARLY [everyone shows up late and unshowered as usual.]
SEMINAL DEFENSES HAVE EVOLVED IN MORE THAN ONE WAY. Chris Brown wonders out loud about the seminal offenses and defenses of football history by decade, and we're disappointed to see that he left out the most influential offense of the 1910s, the "Sitting Bull's Head-Reaper" formation that successfully killed 18 opponents and 47 spectators in Harvard's brilliant pre-war period of gridiron dominance.
OF COURSE VILLANOVA FOOTBALL IS IMPORTANT. It's in the Big East, a BCS football conference that deserves respect and encouragement just like everyone else, especially regarding Villanova's possible jump into the fire. (Ref: here, or here. Villanova seems way more Nilsson to us.) See? Sympathy and advocacy actually sounds so much worse than support, doesn't it?
THE SLEAZE IS PART OF THE APPEAL, FRANKLY. It's a bad narrative, but the only ideal tension for a college football fan would be a tolerable level of corruption. It's like living in New Orleans, Chicago, or Atlanta: you want just enough skullduggery to keep things interesting without the levees breaking or the sewers collapsing. Right now, that may be out of whack to the negative side, but no one wants to live in a place without at least a small element of danger.
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