South Carolina apparently does have a limit

I am both shocked and appalled:

South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia has been dismissed from the No. 15 Gamecocks, a move that a source told ESPN.com's Chris Low resulted from his testing positive for marijuana and alcohol.

Athletic director Eric Hyman said the fifth-year senior failed to meet agreed-upon guidelines put in place after Garcia's fifth suspension this past spring.

So there is in fact a limit to the number of second chances a guy can get at South Carolina: that number is five. And this particular problem isn't a new one since the drug/alcohol thing was supposedly the reason for that spring suspension referenced in the blockquote above. How it's possible to continue doing stupid things after repeatedly getting that one last chance (or five of them) is beyond my comprehension. He clearly needs help.

I'm curious to know what would've happened if Garcia had actually played well this fall and South Carolina had been undefeated, but it doesn't matter now since Garcia was pretty terrible and got benched. Connor Shaw took over last week and went 26 of 39 for 311 yards and four touchdowns in a 54-3 obliteration of a falling-off-a-cliff Kentucky team, throwing for as many TDs as Garcia had all year while South Carolina racked up more yards than in any other game in Spurrier's entire tenure. It's now his team the rest of the way; maybe it should've been all along the way Garcia was playing, especially since Shaw is only a sophomore and will presumably, like, improve. So Garcia was probably done as the starter regardless.

But there's one scary caveat: The depth at QB is now nonexistent. If Shaw falls apart or gets hurt or whatever, there's nobody else for the always-forgiving Ol' Ball Coach to put on the field. The depth chart goes Shaw/Shaw/a couple former two-start recruits who have thrown about two career passes in mop-up duty.

And here's South Carolina's schedule the rest of the way:

@ Mississippi State
@ Tennessee
@ Arkansas
Florida
The Citadel
@ Clemson

Yeesh. Shaw's about to get a hardcore SEC-stye initiation, and South Carolina's hopes for a division title depend on him being good enough to win the large majority of those non-Citadel games. Steve Spurrier being Steve Spurrier, I'm not sure he's philosophically capable of not calling 40 pass plays a game, but this might be a good time to find out just how awesome Marcus Lattimore can be.