Georgia running back Isaiah Crowell (1) jumps over a tackle by the Florida defense during an NCAA college football game, Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011 in Jacksonville, Fla.Isaiah Crowell's much-ballyhooed college football career started unofficially when he held aloft a bulldog puppy to signify his decision to play for the University of Georgia.
His career with the Bulldogs officially ended Friday after he was dismissed from the team following his arrest for a variety of things, including a pair of felony gun possession charges.
Surprising? Not overly, for a few reasons.
Crowell has been in and out of trouble in his time in Athens, spending as much time in the doghouse as he did on the field.
The biggest tell-tale sign that this was bad news though is the timing.
More times than not, college football fans can not get enough of their teams. Plus, for 45 weeks of the year most SEC fans take it as a personal affront to see another league team in the paper.
Welcome to college football's dead zone. The anomaly that is the six weeks from Memorial Day to the middle of July where no news is good news and silence is golden.
As fundamental as the basics of the college football season -- blocking, tackling, establishing the run and stopping it -- the same applies to the summer. If your team gets a headline, it's very rarely a good thing.
Think about the summer college football stories. There are arrests, injuries and transfers. Beyond that it is a grab bag of surprises that rarely overcome the news of a star running back like Crowell getting dismissed from the team or a potential star like Texas A&M freshman quarterback Johnny Manziel getting arrested. And it is seldom good. (Although if there was any doubt that Texas A&M was ready for the SEC, the Aggies showed they have the capabilities to fit right in off the field at the very least.)
Crowell's serious run-in with the law is simply inexcusable, and coach Mark Richt rightly and quickly dismissed him. What does a big-time SEC football player need a gun for? To protect himself from the litany of folks that want to do stuff for him? And why anyone needs a gun with the serial number filed down certainly seems at best shady and at worst criminal.
So here we are, more than two full weeks before SEC media days discussing college football for all the wrong reasons.
But know this -- what goes around comes around. So if you are thinking about delivering some one-liners to your buddies that are Georgia fans, choose your words wisely.
Since just about anything we read over the next two-plus weeks will likely be bad news.