Well, the SEC did exactly as I expected... they turned a blind eye to Brandon Spikes and allowed Urban Meyer to handle the punishment.

And unfortunately, the punishment doesn't fit the crime. The first half of the Vanderbilt game? Really?

If he had actually taken Washaun Ealey's eye out, would he have gotten suspended for the third quarter, also?

Honestly, I would rather Meyer not suspended him, and taken the Saban "we'll handle it internally" route. Nick Saban has taken a lot of flack for his stance on not punishing the team for one player's stupidity, and I agree with that. There are far worse things than being suspended for a game.

A couple of doozies from Coach Saban's tenure have been cleaning out bed pans at a retirement home, and washing out the drunk tank at the police department. While those aren't public, they actually punish the player for the wrong-doing. But a one half suspension?

Kind of reminds me of Pat Dye suspending his starting QB Jeff Burger for plagiarism... For the first play of a game.

Because that's the real problem... if you're going to publicly discipline a guy, the punishment needs to be worth doing. And a suspension for one half of a game in which you are favored by 33.5 is a joke. He would have been better off telling us all that it would be "handled internally" and letting us imagine what heinous thing Spikes was doing for his punishment.

Though, really, the SEC should have taken care of this themselves, and sent a clear message to the players in the conference that this type of behaviour is not acceptable.

What makes matters worse is that the Florida folks are actually justifying it. Sure, Meyer throws the "We don't stand for that" line out there, but the fact that Florida is making excuses demonstrates to me that they don't think it's a big deal.

The worst? Tim Tebow. I'm not the typical internet Tebow basher, either. I think the kid is a great college football player. I also think he gets away with stuff that no one else can get away with - like celebrating after every play and sitting in a sky box at the Super Bowl. But that has nothing to do with whether or not I think he's a great player.

Did you see his quote about the Spikes incident?

"I don’t think that we did anything in that game that they didn’t do"

For a guy who wears his religion on his sleeve (face) as much as he does, maybe Tim needs to consider Christianity's Golden Rule. I understand that he's simultaneously trying to stick up for his teammate and point out how dirty Georgia was playing. But that comment is pretty much the antithesis of what Tebow very publicly claims to believe.

I'm not in favor of using someone's religion to criticize them, but Tebow has made his religion my business by constantly talking about it. He has made it a public issue. So excuse me for one moment if I tell Mr. Tebow that his comment on this issue is very un-Christian-like. Normally I wouldn't care at all about that, but in the case of someone who so adamantly wants to tell me about his Christianity... yeah, I'm gonna care then. Because hypocrisy pisses me off.

Now, having said that... this is an Alabama blog, so I won't be posting something else on this issue... I apologize for being off topic. Look for the practice report later today.

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