Honey Badger Likes The Weed and LSU Apparently Ignored It

((ht: usatoday.com))

So, let's read a little bit between the lines here on a story reported this morning by Jarrett Bell, USA Today's NFL writer.

Tyrann Mathieu, he of the "Honey Badger" fame at LSU, is telling NFL teams he failed more than 10 drug tests in his 2-years at LSU.

And it appears it took that many before LSU decided they finally should do something about it....

As Mathieu makes the rounds of NFL teams, trying to convince them to draft him, an assistant for a team he's already visited tells Bell, that Mathieu is admitting this.

Hmmmm...

Read the entire USA Today story RIGHT HERE

Mathieu's agent tells USA Today that his client is on a "Business Trip" when he visits the teams and he's being completely honest.

Which is nice.

((**UPDATE**--LSU released a statement from Mathieu praising the school and their drug testing program and complaining about information being released about him from the interviews. And while the LSU website says 'He disputes it', if you read what he said, he doesn't deny anything--Read the statement RIGHT HERE ))

It's good business and necessary if Mathieu ever wants a shot at playing in the NFL. However, the question, raised in the story, but not elaborated on is this: Why did LSU do essentially nothing to help the kid?"

And before you, LSU fan says, "It's not OUR responsibility"...we'd argue, yes, it WAS. Obviously the kid has a problem with recreational drug use. He's admitting it.

And yeah, sure LSU and Les Miles, you eventually suspended and kicked him off the team, but not before passing the double digit mark for failed drug tests.

Sorry, at most other schools, we're pretty sure that doesn't happen.

The only conclusion one could draw is that Les Miles or someone in Baton Rouge decided to overlook the issue. Or ignore it.

Maybe because the "Honey Badger" was one of their stars. Maybe because the team was trying to win a national title in 2011. Or maybe it was "We though keeping him around would help him".

Well, it didn't.

It's not our place to preach, but: Is it not the responsibility of a University or in this case an athletic program to recognize a kid in need? Should it not be incumbent on them to force the kid to seek help? And hey, who knows, maybe they finally got around to doing that. But it's hard to believe that there was not mention of failing drug tests 1 through 10--or more, it wasn't until well into double figures before they decided to finally step in.

We're sure the SEC won't do anything about this. In fact they will more than likely ignore it with the hope that it goes away. You can make the argument that ignoring the results of a drug test is a potential NCAA violation, but considering the NCAA's track record of late, we doubt they'll wade into this.

Should there be an investigation. Yes. Will there be. No.

In the end, yeah, sure, you can say it's an "SEC" thing--cheating to win and you probably wouldn't be wrong. The problem we, and YOU should have with what LSU did... or didn't do is "At what cost does ignorance become bliss?"