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On Janoris Jenkins' Sour Grapes

GAINESVILLE FL - NOVEMBER 13: Janoris Jenkins #1 of the Florida Gators gets the crowd up during a game against the South Carolina Gamecocks at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on November 13 2010 in Gainesville Florida.  (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
GAINESVILLE FL - NOVEMBER 13: Janoris Jenkins #1 of the Florida Gators gets the crowd up during a game against the South Carolina Gamecocks at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on November 13 2010 in Gainesville Florida. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
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Because I have a test in a few hours and need this to be quick: it makes sense that Janoris Jenkins would be tweeting about what Florida's missing during a Gators game. I don't like to dip into the "sports are like relationships" well, but what person who is dumped doesn't want the dumper to look back in regret, at least for a while? What disgruntled, pink-slipped employee doesn't want to make the person who fired him or her angry?

Jenkins went from being the best player at one of the best football schools in the country to being the best player at school in a nowhere town with one Walmart. Jenkins got exiled after two second chances, one with Urban Meyer and one with Will Muschamp, and I still have no problem whatsoever with his dismissal. You have to be pretty stupid or intentionally law-averse to get arrested as many times as he did, and Muschamp, with a much shorter and weaker relationship with Jenkins, had no compelling reason to keep him around other than football.

Talent got Jenkins his third second chance at North Alabama, and talent will almost certainly get him to the NFL. But that talent will be weighed against the potential headaches Jenkins could bring: as a spiteful guy who tweets things like he did, a marijuana user who could fail a drug test or three, and a scofflaw who can't be counted on to keep himself away from trouble. It would be easier to miss you now that you're gone, Janoris, if it seemed like you had made any effort to stay, and it would be easier to remember your time in Gainesville fondly if you weren't clearly so embittered by decisions made in response to decisions you made.