Remember the name Alonzo Lawrence?  Once a sure thing, shooting to the top of everyone’s recruiting board in 2007-2008, the young man who “shut down” Julio Jones in the 2007 Alabama-Mississippi All-Star game has now left his second Division I football program either on his own, or after being asked to leave.

Southern Mississippi head coach Larry Fedora confirmed that Lawrence left the program, but had not spoken to him about it.

“I haven’t seen or talked to him so I don’t know where he is to be honest with you,” Fedora told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. “There’s nothing we did on our side.”

Lawrence was a physical specimen, and the prototypical shut down corner every defensive coach dreams about.  He was a top ten recruit in the Southeast by most recruiting services and the 2007 Mississippi-Alabama All-Star game MVP.

But there was something there off the field that just wasn’t right.

Alabama head coach Nick Saban came under much criticism last summer when he dismissed Lawrence and three other teammates from the squad for “violating some type of policy or team rule”.  With the others, the stand out corner didn’t receive an invite to be part of the squad.

At the time, Saban was just a monster.  He just didn’t care about the players.  All Saban wanted to do was over sign and cut away the fat at his convenience and at the expense of student athletes.

Or maybe, just maybe, he saw an outstanding player who could contribute immediately but with unfixable issues that was a potential cancer to the other 109 players within his program.  Maybe Saban does care about his players. Maybe he wants to protect the ones he can help and wants to fulfill his promise to their families that he can offer them a brighter future.

Maybe…just maybe…Saban knows what he’s doing in Tuscaloosa after all.

If a marriage doesn’t work out, a person may have walked into issues.  If a second one fails, that person often has the issues.

Lawrence’s high school coach stated that he believes he is on his way to possibly his last chance. “He’s been offered an opportunity at Gulf Coast Community College,” Jones said. “I think it’s his only opportunity.”

It’ll be interesting to see what program takes the young man if he completes his time at the community college.

3 thoughts on “Lawrence leaves Southern Miss”

  1. If things don’t work out for Dontae Aycock at his next school, will the same rationale apply to Gene Chizik??

    Speaking of Aycock, where has he “transferred” to?? Certainly, a quality kid like that who was already contemplating transfer before being unjustly dismissed from Auburn has wound up at another school by now, hasn’t he??

  2. I’m not sure. I’m still waiting for someone to be willing to publicly run with the story that Lawrence didn’t know why he was dismissed from either program.

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