Heroin Addict Quarterback? Say What?
To say that I'm a huge Univerity of Tennessee Football fan would be a major understatement. I am one of those biased, ridiculous fans that can twist any conversation into a personal proclamation of my love for The Vols. I've had people tell me it's disgusting.
Look, times have been hard on Rocky Top for a few years now. It started around 2005. That's when a former freshman phenom of a QB, named Eric Ainge, put together a miserable, cringe worthy sophomore campaign at QB for Tennessee. It wasn't the same guy that had taken the reigns his freshman year. Not the same guy that, with his 6-6 220 frame was drawing the "young Peyton Manning" comparisons, which is the standard that all Tennessee QB's are measured by.
Although he seemed to recover his Junior year with the help of noted QB guru and Offensive Coordinator (Now Duke's Head Coach) David Cutcliffe, he never lived up to the early hype surrounding him. Especially with a name like Ainge. His uncle is former Boston Celtic great & now President of Basketball Operations for the Celtics, Danny Ainge. Danny was an incredible athlete. A little remembered fact about his uncle , is that before he played in the NBA, he played Major League Baseball for the Toronto Blue Jays.
Eric Ainge was drafted in the fourth round by the New York Jets, just one season before they drafted Mark Sanchez with their #1 pick. Ainge, thus far, is a career back up. A clip board holder. Now he is sharing his story with anyone who will listen. It's on the main page at MSN today and has been all over ESPN. Not to mention that it's perfect message board fodder for obsessed fans. He's a drug addict. A bad one. And he has been for a long time.
Ainge, who said he "would've made Charlie Sheen look like Miss Daisy," missed the entire 2010 season because he went on a two-week partying spree before training camp and checked himself into a rehab facility.
"I'm a drug addict," Ainge said. "I was in denial for a long time, but that's who I am. My addiction is with the hardest of hard drugs — heroin, cocaine and alcohol. During my days of using, I was a really bad drug addict."
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This explains a lot about the decline of Tennessee football, that just so happened to start with Ainge at QB.
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