What Is It About A Little Backwards State Like West Virginia That Makes People Crazy?

This guy was the only person in West Virginia fit enough to lead the crowd in such a physically demanding cheer.
In a story that reeks of "what else is new," yet another athlete with West Virginia ties has fallen out of favor with his program and been dismissed. Former Huntington High star, Chris Early, was dismissed from the University of Oklahoma basketball team by second year head coach Jeff Capel for unspecified reasons. Early, a high school teammate of OJ Mayo, was one piece of a sterling recruiting class by Capel and though no reason for the dismissal has been made public, I'd wager that it didn't have a ton to do with OU's student / teacher ratio. So, off the top of my head, the list of troubled athletes with ties to West Virginia now includes Randy Moss (say no more), OJ Mayo (he will be a nightmare), White Chocolate (who uttered this infamous ditty: "I will shoot you Asian motherfuckers. Do you remember the Vietnam War? I'll kill y'all just like that."), John Kruk (eating disorder), Kevin Pittsnogle (tuxedo disorder), Jerry Porter (personality disorder), Todd Sauerbraun (roids), Mike Vanderjagt (booze), Terry Bowden (NCAA Violations), Bob Huggins (Booze and NCAA violations) and derelict All-Stars Chris Henry and Adam PacMan Jones. It would seem that West Virginia just attracts jerks at an alarming rate. But that does not tell the whole story. Maybe we've got these guys all wrong. Maybe it's the nature of West Virginia, not some problem with the people that pass through it.

What a lot of people don't know about Bengals Wide Receiver Chris Henry and Strip Club Addict Adam PacMan Jones is that coming out of high school these two were National Merit Scholars. They were actually not ever recruited for football and only backdoored their way into the football program after being noticed by a WVU assistant coach while doing wind sprints in order to complete a extra-credit physics project the summer before their freshman year (they enrolled early to get ahead academically).* But as soon as school started, something in the West Virginia air or water got to these kids and next thing you know they are involved in shootings, providing alcohol to minors, public vomitting and other some such nonsense. Henry and PacMan were merely unsuspecting victims of the natural moral decay that comes with every extra second spent within the borders of the state of West Virginia. There is no way that it is merely a coincidence that people who are in some way affiliated with the state of West Virginia wind up getting involved in some type of impropriety at some point in their careers. I don't know what it is about the state that is causing these problems in people, but clearly the focus should be off the players/coaches and on the state itself. PacMan Jones and Chris Henry should receive our pity not our scorn. Chew on that!

*Facts about Henry and Jones not necessarily accurate.