It may have taken a little while and some poking at Charlie Weis with a Demetrius Jones-shaped stick, but the answers surrounding Jones' claims about being pulled so quickly from the Irish's season-opener against Georgia Tech last season have been answered.
Sort of.
Weis spoke with the Chicago Tribune's Brian Hamilton this week and said Jones, who has since left the school and is enrolled at Cincinnati, had missed a mandatory team meeting the Sunday before the first game. Weis had contemplated suspending him for the opener, but considering he had installed a spread offense specifically for Jones, decided he would suspend him for the second game of the season against Penn State.
So what does this mean?
It certainly gives a clear-cut reason for why Notre Dame looked so lost against Georgia Tech, then the next week against Penn State and again in Week 3 against Michigan, when Jones decided to transfer by not making the bus to Ann Arbor.
Sure, it might have not made a difference but if there was debate within the team over whether or not Jones should be playing, a rift could have happened which would mean the team wouldn't be playing together, something more critical in an opener when everything is still new.
Either way, it provides a fascinating post-script to the 2007 season.
-By Michael Rothstein of The Journal Gazette
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