Abandon all hope, ye who coach in Columbia.

I don’t know how quickly South Carolina freshman QB Stephen Garcia is learning Spurrier’s playbook, but he’s sure getting an early education on how South Carolina’s criminal justice system works:

For the second time in three weeks, Stephen Garcia spent part of a Saturday in jail.

The heralded South Carolina quarterback was arrested Saturday and charged with vandalizing the car of a USC professor that was parked on campus Thursday afternoon.

The arrest came two weeks after Garcia was charged with drunkenness and failure to stop on a police command following an altercation outside of the Knock Knock Club in Five Points early on Feb. 17.

Needless to say, this kid has made the Evil Genius look foolish, something that’s usually hard to do, and no doubt has some serious consequences:

… Under USC athletic department policy, Garcia will be suspended indefinitely and will not be allowed to participate in team activities, media relations director Steve Fink said.

Garcia initially told Gamecocks coach Steve Spurrier that he had been falsely accused. In a statement released Saturday, Spurrier he would make a decision on Garcia after the legal system had “run its course.”

Garcia, who enrolled at USC in January, was suspended for four days following his February arrest. After lifting Garcia’s suspension, Spurrier said he hoped Garcia had learned his lesson…

I think it’s safe to say that the “hoping” phase has ended. He’s probably into something like the “ass-kicking” stage now.

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One toke over the line

In what comes as no real surprise, Quincy Carter admits he smoked weed in college.

Of course, the $64,000 questions are whether anyone in a position of authority at Georgia ever knew about (or even had reason to suspect) QC’s little vice and, if so, what he or she did upon finding out about the situation.

“I hope he plays as good as he looks…”

It’s good to know that Matthew Stafford follows recruiting just like we fans do:

Pregame is about tunnel vision. Blocking out all distractions. Focusing on one goal.

That’s where Georgia quarterback Matthew Stafford was just before the Bulldogs played Georgia Tech last season. Then something blocked his view.

It was Vince Vance, standing at the end of the Dawg Walk.

“When I went by him, I read his name tag, and I knew that we had [gotten a commitment from the offensive lineman],” Stafford said. “He was just mammoth.”

As in block out the sun, hide the children. Feel the earth shake big. And all that means … absolutely nothing. Because while size does matter when it comes to tackles, skill matters more. Then again the size doesn’t exactly hurt either.

“I hope he plays as good as he looks because he looks like a real good one,” Stafford said.

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

For a lot of NCAA investigators, it looks like in their next life, they come back as private practice attorneys specializing in collegiate athletic rules enforcement.

Sure it’s lucrative, as

… Bond, Schoeneck & King made a name for itself in the wake of an academic fraud scandal involving the University of Minnesota’s men’s basketball team in 1999. The firm’s services cost the university $920,000.

Kansas paid the firm $477,000 to ferret out infractions that occurred in the athletic department from 2000 to 2003. The university spent $65,000 more than that to run its baseball team for one season.

Similarly, Ohio State paid the law firm nearly $511,000 from 2003 to 2006 to investigate its men’s and women’s basketball teams and to examine accusations of academic misconduct by Maurice Clarett, a former star running back for the Buckeyes…

Just don’t ever think it’s too cozy. No, sir:

But she rejected the notion that she and other lawyers with N.C.A.A. experience were trading on prior relationships on behalf of clients.“I suppose some people feel that way,” she said. “We are adversaries, though. We’re going to challenge the N.C.A.A. staff, and they are going to challenge us. Each side values its credibility.”

Judging from the size of those legal bills, so do her clients.