Erik Ainge comes clean about his drug addiction, which had gone on for a long time.
… By the time I was a senior in college, I was an addict. I played my whole senior season with a broken finger on my throwing hand. It was really badly broken. Just taking the snap, throwing the ball, handing it off, getting tackled — everything that goes along with playing quarterback — it was very painful.
Throughout that process, I became hooked on pain killers. I got them from the team doctor. I went through the prescriptions pretty fast. After he had been giving them to me for quite a while, he said he couldn’t give them to me anymore.
I was hooked on them and I was playing football, and there was no way I was going to cancel my senior year by going to rehab. I started getting them from people, buying them, getting them off the street. I wasn’t the only player on the team that was doing it, so we knew people. It wasn’t, like, super sketchy or anything. We knew people who had them, and we were Tennessee football players, so they pretty much just gave them to us.
Just to refresh your memories, Ainge didn’t miss a game that season.
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UPDATE: Chris Low, master of understatement.
If nothing else, it certainly calls into question the validity and effectiveness of Tennessee’s drug-testing program while he was there.
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He beat us 35-14 that year.
It goes to show you that Erik Ainge + broken finger + pain killers > Casey Clausen + one hand tied behind his back.
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The parallels between Fulmer’s last few years and Donnan’s are uncanny. Here’s hoping Ainge doesn’t follow Quincy’s footsteps any further.
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So what we have here is evidence that the most talented team UGA had fielded in years was bitch-slapped by a team led by a pain-killer addicted QB who had a broken finger?
That’s just excellent. If I remember correctly, UT was up about 4 scores at the half, right?
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War Willie.
To be fair, a geeked up QB playing well is not without precedence. See Favre, Brett.
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I needed a pain-killer after that game.
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I needed a new liver after that game.
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Stick meet eye. I was at that game and I can’t express how disappointed I was in Willie and the sham of a defense he was rolling out there.
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I was late to the party, but that was the first game that I realized that Willie needed to go. Well, not as late as some I guess.
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It’s really a case of Johnnies and Joes, not X’s and O’s.
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LOL
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I still have nightmares of those 3 tall receivers – they were just playing catch.
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Georgia/Auburn ’05 for me. Proud to be ahead of the curve.
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this comment made me furious: I went to Tennessee to visit friends, and I had some trouble with the law. It never got reported because the cops were Tennessee fans, and they saw how bad a shape I was in. It was so bad that I don’t even want to talk about it. I was cuffed, but instead of busting me, the cops called somebody in town that knew me.
think that would fly with ACC cops?
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I was just about to post this. This infuriates and disgusts me. I guess it shouldn’t be surprising, though.
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+1. With the questionable ethics and tactics of many SEC coaches and the “all in” approach of local law enforcement (prosecutors and judges, included), you’re facing a stacked deck on most Saturdays if you are even trying to run a clean program in this league.
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Erik: “I’d like the lockout to be over so I can get my insurance back.”
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Low and Barnhardt need to get together and write a level headed article that is full of folksy wisdom.
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I wondered what happened to Ainge. Similar to Matt Jones I guess, more talent gone to waste. We can’t fool ourselves, UT isn’t the only place where pain killers are sold on the street, and in a sport where guys are expected to “man up and play through it”, Erik was not the last CFB player addicted. I was told by a person in the know that the reason Jake Scott was traded by the Dolphins was that he refused to shoot up a strained hammy and play an exibition game. He was told that if he didn’t want to play the ‘Fins had some young guys that wanted to play. Jake said play’em and trade me.
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Keep in mind, that’s the season where a UT loss in close games against Vandy, SCar, and UK would’ve put us in the SEC Championship game with a guaranteed trip to the National Title game if we’d won. Painkillers, indeed.
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What are you suggesting? Certainly not that a staff could look the other way when a star player is using illegal pain killers. After all, they were only in danger of losing to inferior opponents in a year that the HCs butt is on the line! If the HCs butt is on the line, theirs are too.
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Jake himself said that , not sure what an all pro(scott had been league for years) has to do with cfb.Is this a backhanded way of slapping UGA ? Check your calendar(35 yrs ago) and info. ’68 was Jakes final season at UGA.Jake was all american, all pro, super bowl mvp. The analogy doesn’t work.
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Not to split hairs, but I think Shane#1 was conveying an anecdote, not making an analogy.
I don’t think the post was attacking Scott. It was commentary on tolerance for use of pain killers in sports.
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Um, Jake refused the pain killers and was punished for it in the story.
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Jake was an All Pro and a Super Bowl MVP, yet he was asked to shoot up a strained ham string to play in a pre-season game . With the tendons numbed the hammy could tear and Scott couldn’t feel it. An injury like that could have ended his career. All for a pre-season game that meant nothing and paid less than regular season games. So he told the Dolphins to stuff it and went to the Redskins, where George Allen liked veteran players. Don’t feel too sorry for old Jake though, I think he got a six figure raise from Allen. The point of my story is that pain killers have been as common as astro turf around college and pro ball for years.
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Wow this should not come as a big surprise to anyone. Players get hurt players take pain killers. Football team and the NCAA don’t care about pain killers they care about MaryJane and roids. Ever wonder how a guy can hardly walk out at half time but comes back after the half and looks great, er pain killers or a shoot of lidocaine. The only thing that gets me is that Erik could destroy us while in a drugged state. Speaks volumes about the Willie Bend and Break D.
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You mean the “Willie Break and Break more D.”
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He threw for 3,500 yards and 31 TDs that year. I’m not going to defend Martinez, because he sort of sucked as a DC, but he wasn’t the only one to get torched by a QB in a drugged state that year.
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Ainge was quite ordinary against Florida that year. Must of been a game where his substance abuse went a bit overboard
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Oh, they have a drug testing program at UT, Fulmer had to give a RB a FOURTH strike to keep him on the field a few years ago. Only Auburn keeps them from dominating the cellar when it comes to ethics and embracing bad behavior.
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I was deep in the UT fan section. Their fans were actually shocked and apologizing to me and my friend for winning.
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was nothing personal towards shane , i guess i missed the point (even now). The senator posted this link a while back (the link within is priceless) http://patrickgarbin.blogspot.com/2010/03/great-jake-scott.html
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