Where there’s smoke… there’s Auburn.

I can’t claim credit for the header, but I don’t think you have to be a ‘Bama fan to acknowledge it’s been a bad week for the school on the Plains.

It started with the Selena Roberts allegations, which have provoked gales of righteous indignation from the Chiz and the usual “we take them seriously” response from Jay Jacobs.  But we barely had time to absorb those statements before ESPN tossed in a blockbuster of its own about widespread synthetic marijuana usage that the school covered up.  It ain’t pretty, to say the least.  I await Chizik’s denial to this tidbit:

In one extreme case, a freshman tight end, Dakota Mosley, failed seven consecutive weekly tests for the drug, but never was punished. (He was suspended for three months in a separate incident after he tested positive for marijuana.) The Arkansas native says he learned he’d failed a sixth test on the same day he was scheduled to meet with NCAA investigators to discuss a probe into potential recruiting violations.

Instead of being kicked off the team, Mosley was brought into then-coach Gene Chizik’s office and told he could keep his spot on the team.

“The whole time, I was thinking, ‘They can’t do nothing about the spice,’ ” Mosley told The Magazine and “E:60.”

Well, they did do something.  Sort of.

According to a statement released Thursday night by Auburn attributed to athletic director Jay Jacobs, a test for the fake weed was not made available by the university’s testing company until January 24, 2011; “Auburn added the test to its panel on Jan. 27, 2011,” Jacobs said in his statement.  That addition would’ve come nearly three weeks after AU won its first national championship in over five decades after beating Oregon in the BCS title game. [Emphasis added.]

(Greg McGarity shakes his head.)

I’ve got no idea where this is going to go.  Auburn’s dodged so many bullets over the years, I can’t help but think this will all wind up being little more than sound and fury.  The NCAA’s weakened state can’t hurt, either.  But I can’t resist letting Jordan Jenkins have the last word – at least for the moment.

… Jenkins was just referring to journalist Selena Roberts’ story, which alleged payments to players, academic fraud and other shenanigans.

“Some of that stuff is -” Jenkins then made a whistling sound. “Glad I didn’t go there.”

Jenkins said he read about half the story on Wednesday night, then decided to go to sleep.

“I believe a little bit of it,” Jenkins said. “Some of it’s a little hearsay. I think some stuff might’ve been going on. But some of it’s a little far-fetched, I think.”

Jenkins said none of that ever happened to him while he was being recruited.

“The closest thing I ever got was … I don’t even know. I had no shady recruitment,” he said. “If someone had offered me a million dollars I would’ve thought about it for a second. Then I probably would’ve said no. But I don’t know: For a million dollars you probably would’ve been able to get a good enough lawyer.”

Jay Jacobs is right there with you, Dawg.