Eleven of the 13 members of the writing staff of the Georgia Bulldogs weblog Dawg Sports have been suspended after the results of random writer drug screenings revealed that the suspended bloggers tested positive for banned substances, according to an announcement by T. Kyle King, one of the site managers.
Dawg Sports, which has operated as part of the SB Nation network since February 2006, expanded its writing staff to its present stable of 13 contributors last August. Ten of the eleven suspended writers were among the 2011 additions to the masthead, with the final staff member placed on indefinite suspension from all blog activities being the site’s other manager, MaconDawg.
“I am disappointed that these members of the Dawg Sports team chose to act in a way that is detrimental to the best interests of the site, the network, and Bulldog Nation,” said King in a 34,000-word prepared statement containing 128 hyperlinks and a lengthy, and unrelated, aside on the historical importance of the college football rivalry between the Bulldogs and the nearby Clemson Tigers. “However, these writers engaged in this conduct, and they must suffer the consequences.” King did not take questions from the media, pointedly ignoring the efforts of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jeff Schultz to ask for further details.
Several of the suspended writers reportedly were confronted with the results of the drug screenings while emerging from an alley, and it is believed that the only reason none of them were kicked off the staff altogether is that DavetheDawg and The Quincy Carter of Accountants both successfully spelled their middle user names, “the” and “Quincy Carter of,” respectively. The other suspended writers’ user names do not include middle names, so they were not required to spell them, though NCT, Mr. Sanchez, and vineyarddawg had to convince an angry King that their middle names were not, in fact, “C,” “period,” and “yard,” respectively.
The suspended writers tested positive for a variety of different substances, the most unusual combination of which was the mixture of absinthe, Rohypnol, and peyote discovered in the bloodstream of NCT. When asked about the strange concoction found in his test sample, NCT said calmly that he had no recollection of taking the drugs, or, for the matter of that, of the approximately 72 hours immediately preceding the test. During his placid, polite, and erudite elucidation concerning his test results, NCT appeared entirely contented, chain-smoked half a pack of Djarum Black clove cigarettes, and lapsed periodically into stories from Georgia lore which relied heavily upon the public statements and published works of Dan Magill, recitations of the Symbolist fin de siecle poems of Paul-Marie Verlaine in the original French, and assorted verses from the songs of Hugh Hodgson and Cole Porter, all while seated in the lotus position and playing the sitar.
Ludakit, the only suspended staff member to admit his guilt and demonstrate remorse, was caught with excessive amounts of prescription-strength cough syrup with codeine in his bloodstream. An apologetic and teary-eyed Ludakit acknowledged his error in judgment, but stated that he was attempting to replicate the episode of “The Dawg-Gone Podcast” in which King was high on cold medication. The Quincy Carter of Accountants, who tested positive for marijuana, displayed no evidence of regret. “Of course I smoke pot, you idiot,” he shouted at reporters from the door of his office cubicle. “I’m not ‘The Blake Barnes of Accountants,’ am I? Am I?”
The other staff member found to have marijuana in her system, podunkdawg, was believed to be not only a user, but also a purveyor, of some of the banned substances. Commonly referred to by her colleagues as the site’s “house mother,” and self-admittedly able to “bake like a demon,” podunkdawg is well known for her unusually popular homemade baked goods. A half-eaten pan of brownies was found in her kitchen at the time podunkdawg was tested, and, when the results of her test were revealed to her, she angrily exclaimed, “I swear, it was just oregano!”
It came as no surprise when MaconDawg tested positive for crack cocaine, crystal meth, and heroin, as a subsequently-removed video previously appearing at the Dawg Sports YouTube channel showed the suspended site manager taking all of these drugs in grainy black-and-white footage that appeared to show MaconDawg sitting on a couch in his basement with two unidentified males bearing striking resemblances to Tom Lemming and Chip Towers. MaconDawg, who was unavailable for comment, was last seen in a white Ford Bronco, which appeared to be bound for the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.
DavetheDawg, Mr. Sanchez, RedCrake, tankertoad, and vineyarddawg all tested positive for EPL, a performance-inhibiting substance known to cause users to be distracted from Georgia non-revenue sports by soccer. EPL abusers, King noted in his prepared statement, often are in denial about their addiction, which they attempt to hide by claiming they are fans of “football.” EPL is a particularly insidious drug, as users are discouraged from believing they can control their addiction by fellow users who insist that “it’s harder than you think to kick [the habit].” “Soccer,” King concluded, “is a foreign substance, of which we at Dawg Sports strongly disapprove.”
Finally, Spears tested positive for cocaine, methamphetamine, and red panties. Tested at roadside after being pulled over in a routine traffic stop, Spears reportedly stood up out of the driver’s seat of his 2012 Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4 to provide his sample, at which time the red women’s undergarments resting in his lap (which were believed to belong to one of the three female exotic dancers who were passengers in the car) felt into the jar into which Spears urinated. “Coke and meth, we can live with,” King explained when announcing Spears’s suspension, “but driving with red panties in your lap? What Georgia fan doesn’t know not to do that at this point?”
“It’s a good thing he didn’t do this the day before I left town on vacation,” King added, “or I’d have banned his [buttocks].”
Other than King, the only contributor whose drug screen came back completely clean was hailtogeorgia, whose sample was negative for all tested substances, though the laboratory technician performing the testing remarked in the report that hailtogeorgia had “curiously cold urine.”
Reactions around the blogosphere were mixed. And the Valley Shook called the suspensions “a measured response,” and indicated that the LSU blog would happily accept any of the suspended contributors who wished to transfer within the network. Alabama bloggers at Roll ‘Bama Roll deemed the so-called “masthead management” weak and cited it as proof that King was too tolerant of mediocrity and too nice a guy ever to be a successful college football blogger. The Roll ‘Bama Roll representative suggested that King treat drug use as a medical condition, force the underperforming members of the Dawg Sports staff to take medical greyshirts, and sign “35 or 40 new bloggers.”
Get the Picture’s Senator Blutarsky feared that, whatever the ultimate resolution of the controversy, the result would be driven by financial interests, rather than by fans’ preferences, and writers from From the Rumble Seat explained: “thUGA! U(sic)GA! georgie! DWAGS! THWG!” while speeding through downtown Atlanta in the Ramblin’ Wreck following an evening of heavy drinking, with a passenger discharging a firearm at passersby from the window of the moving vehicle as a bound and gagged kidnapped 16-year-old girl and a murdered prostitute rested on 147 kilos of uncut pharmaceutical-grade cocaine in the trunk. Finally, bloggers from Garnet and Black Attack asked, “Did the Dawg Sports guys mention anything about South Carolina? Anything at all? ‘Cause we’re big-time rivals, y’know.”
It was not known at press time whether the suspended staff members would be back before spring football practice got underway, but rumors circulated widely that the recent rapprochement on Twitter between King and Tyler Dawgden meant that Dawgden, like Malcolm Mitchell, might be asked to “play both ways.”
When contacted for comment, Orson Swindle of Every Day Should Be Saturday stated that Fulmer Cup points would not be assessed against the Georgia football team, though he did strike up the chant, “SEC! SEC! SEC!”
Shortly after the suspensions were announced, Kevin Copp of GeorgiaDogs.com reported that the Twitter hashtag “#FreetheDawgSports11” was “trending.”
Go ‘Dawgs!