The more things change, right?
Former USC running back Dillon Baxter was hoping for a fresh start when he enrolled at San Diego State just months after being deemed “no longer part of the team” with the Trojans last October.
Instead, it looks like Baxter’s transition to a new school hasn’t resulted in new habits. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that Baxter will miss spring practice with the Aztecs because of a “variety of things” that haven’t met the expectations of coach Rocky Long.
“He’s working on personal issues and academics, and if all that turns out all right at the end of the semester, he’ll back with us at training camp (in August),” Long said.
Not that Baxter was going to have a huge, or even moderate, role in spring practices anyway. NCAA transfer rules are forcing Baxter to sit out the 2012 season and Long added that the running back’s main focus this spring was to be on watching others, not taking reps.
“The plan was for him to be out here in the spring, yes,” Long said. “He wasn’t going to get any reps, though. He would have been standing watching everybody else play. He wasn’t going to get handed the ball one time in spring practice. That was our agreement with him from the very start. So this extra time he’s spending on academics is very good for him.”
Indeed. We scoff a lot at the term “student-athlete” nowadays, and that’s fine, but there comes a point where you hope, for Baxter’s sake, he can get it together off the field as it’s becoming more and more apparent whatever talent he has isn’t carrying him.
You don’t have to be a rocket surgeon to go to college -- trust me on that one -- but it does take a certain level of maturity and readiness. By the sound of it, Baxter is still having a hard time with that.