E Cook Ends Up With No Class

(First, apologies about the headline, Mr. Cook. It was really just a catchy way to introduce the blog story. I don't know you personally, so I don't feel I could judge you anyway. Besides, judgmental people are uncool.)

The University of South Carolina's hardest hitter, and leading tackler, Emmanual Cook is fast. He's so fast, he is off the team before the Gamecocks could even travel to Tampa for their January 1 Outback Bowl game against the Iowa Hawkeyes.

Coach Steve Spurrier announced Cook's abrupt career end after the team's second practice for the bowl game. Seems Mr. Cook didn't hold up his end of the bargain to actually go to class as a student at USC. Because of six hours of classes that he somehow just couldn't make himself attend, Mr. Cook is as history as Steve Taneyhill. Gone. Finished.

Sad.

I'm not going to call the young man out personally. Did he make a bad decision? Absolutely. He apparently had his mind made up that he was NFL-bound, so as the college football season wore on, he decided it was no big deal to not make it to classes. I do understand, somewhat, what his mindset could have been. After all, he isn't the first player to fall off the academic planet when he knew pro sports was in his near future. There have been countless football players who just go into hibernation mode after their senior season is over. With the NFL draft just a couple of months away, why continue on with class if you don't have to? Doesn't sound right, but I do understand how a young man on the verge of NFL riches could think that way.

But it is still sad.

Sad for his teammates, who counted on him to be a leader of the team as they take on a strong Iowa team in the bowl game. Now, he has let them down in a potentially damaging way. E Cook was an important cog in the Gamecock defense.

Sad for his coaches, who now have to work overtime just to try to get prepared with an undermanned defense that had suffered some serious lapses in the last two games of the regular season.

Sad for the fans, who came as close to worshipping E-Cook as any defensive player they've seen in these parts in the past decade. In my mind, he was running a close second to John Abraham in that category. And we all know how good Abraham is in the NFL now.

Just sad.

But the biggest problem to me in all of this is not that another player has fallen victim to bad judgement, but that the babysitter system that I believe most schools must have in place, did not work in this case, for whatever reason.

The athletes are coddled at big schools, with wake ups, all kinds of services, tutors, and buddy systems. Surely there is a system that monitors whether players are going to class, so that these types of problems can be averted.

In this case, somebody at USC apparently had no clue -- for a while, at least -- until the cow was out of the barn. If the system MUST work this way, then USC MUST do a better job of keeping the cow in the barn in future players' cases, or the same mistakes will continue.

Good luck, Mr. Cook. I sincerely hope you have one fantastic NFL career. I also hope that you will see the wisdom in completing your education in the future, and that you will bless the University with some nice financial contributions in the future from the millions that you will be rewarded with for leaving school early.