For violations of team rules? What the…I give up.
University of North Carolina head coach Butch Davis has suspended senior defensive tackle Marvin Austin indefinitely.
“This decision is not a result of the ongoing NCAA review,” says Davis. “Marvin has violated team rules and has neglected his responsibilities to the team.”
Austin will not play Saturday vs. LSU.
You want my honest take? I have no freaking idea what this means. Seriously. We hear the “violated team rules” reason all the time but I have no clue what constitutes “neglecting his responsibilities to the team.” If anyone has a guess, feel free to toss it out there because I am having trouble coming up with even something wildly speculative.
UPDATE: Mark Armstrong at WTVD has tweeted the following about the Austin suspension:
Source tells me suspension is partially related to facebook post, but Austin has also been skipping classes, dogging it in practice cont’d
If that is true and it is likely the NCAA is going to suspend him anyway, I am not sure why he is still on the team other than it makes UNC appear to be passing judgment prematurely.
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It should be noted this is the second sudden move UNC has made today. This morning UNC went all Soup Nazi on the media by shutting down access to players and coaches which included canceling already scheduled interviews. I am going to go out on a limb here and say the isolation from the media is related to the Austin suspension announcement. I know, really daring risk I am taking there. For players and coaches to talk to the media then have this news breaks means said interviews are worthless and it looks like UNC was holding out. The media access decision is also likely related to Robert Quinn and Kendric Burney tap dancing their way through a couple of interviews yesterday. The Quinn interview was described as painful/awkward. Burney fared much better according the message boards. Still, it is probably not a good idea to keep trotting these guys out there if they do not even know whether they will play vs LSU much less answer any investigation questions.
