Inside Scoop

You can blame the football team for the increased drug testing regimen.

UCLA kicked off their best player this year for repeated violations.

a week or so ago, someone posted a thread titled "Faust." It was meant to praise the kid, but someone replied that seeing a thread like that during the offseason caused his heart to stop before he opened it. "I'm going to get paranoid every time this offseason I see a thread started with the name of a current player. I keep waiting for bad news to drop." I felt the same way. Then we got yesterday's Pe' news. And today's Stoglin news. Ugh.

It may seem like a tough pill to swallow, losing the best player on the team, but we have to keep in mind that he was not the best player for this team. Obviously, I'd much rather go into next season with a proven commodity like Stoglin, but this could be addition by subtraction. One of the reasons Jordan Williams declared early was because he did not like playing/get along with Stogs. I'm unsure of how many other guys felt it was hard to play with him and will do better without him on the team. Many teams have rallied around losing an unpopular lockerroom figure, no matter how important to the team's success that guy may be. Just trying to stay optimistic, I guess.

Additionally, I was originally baffled by the timing of this news after reading a tweet of our release that both Parker and Stogs were suspended for the year. (First, why drag Parker's name through the mud? Transparency?). Obviously Turge laid it out for Parker; you won't play next year and guys will pass you. He needed the ship, so I understand why Parker's decision was weeks ago. I'm not sure that Stogs has gone through an appeal process (Portis's appeal wasn't decided until the day of/before the first game IIRC), or if there's anything to appeal. I'm still struggling to see the two decisions were weeks apart. Parker announced on April 9th; LOIs couldn't be signed until April 11th. Any suggestion that Stoglin was kept on board through that date to make sure recruits didn't want to jump of a sinking ship or were they all solid enough that this has no bearing?