Four years ago, Andre Allen was Jordan Jefferson.
After the Memphis Tigers dispatched Texas in the Elite Eight to earn the program’s third Final Four appearance, Andre Allen would fail a drug test that would spell the end for him at Memphis, a precipitated fall for a guy who was once one of the best 8th grade basketball players in the area.
Almost 12 months later, on a warm February afternoon, the apartment complex I lived in was swarmed with cops.
The reason?
On a tip from the owners of the apartments we lived in, the cops searched through Andre Allen’s apartment for evidence of drug dealing.
By this time, Allen was playing guard at an NAIA school in Memphis, a far cry from the bright lights of FedEx Forum.
But not far enough for him to escape his demons.
I thought about that last week when Tyrann Mathieu and Jordan Jefferson got arrested last week for drug use.
Like Allen was in 2009, both Jefferson and Mathieu were not too far removed from being on top of the world when they fell from grace last week.
And like Allen, the two former LSU players couldn’t get out of their own way.
It’s easy to say that the lack of a football structure is to blame for this.
But that’s like throwing a coat of paint on an abandoned house.
The downfall of both was not lack of football structure.
It was their own personal demons catching up to them and their inability to escape them.
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