Published June 14, 2012 - 4:00am
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Funeral arrangements have been set for the two former Auburn football players and an Auburn resident after they were killed last weekend. Ladarious Phillips’ funeral will be held in his hometown of Roanoke, Virginia on Friday. The funeral for Ed Christian will be Saturday in his hometown of Valdosta, Georgia. The funeral for Demario Pitts will Friday in Loachapoka, Alabama. Thankfully the suspect turned himself in and no other people will be harmed. Gene Chizik said he will provide transportation for all football players and athletic personnel who will attend. [AL]
Derrick Henry decommitted from Georgia and is now looking hard at Alabama. Nick Saban is starting to cherry pick recruits from around the country. Henry is a top RB from Florida, but committed to Georgia last year and has been committed there since. He has, however, now gone back on his pledge to UGA and will likely commit to Alabama soon. “For the rest of the summer, I am focusing on helping my team have the best season that we can have and achieve our team goals. Please refer any questions about my recruitment to my head coach. I’m not sure when I’ll make a final announcement, but when I have no doubts at all about where I’m going, I’ll let everyone know.” [AL]
Florida is picked to finish third in the East in most of the preseason magazines this year. Only Phil Steele has picked the Gators to win the East, and he has Florida as one of his surprise teams. He also notes that former second year head coaches have won national championships in the SEC, most notably Urban Meyer and Gene Chizik. Muschamp is in his second year at Florida, and he will have a very solid defense to work with. The major question marks are on offense and at QB. [Gator Sports]
Georgia knows they are the favorite to win the SEC East this year. They are favored over every other East team. This is nothing unusual, as Georgia is always heavily favored in June and July leading into September. “Our motto last year was, ‘We’re on the bus and we’re not listening to any outside noise,’” Murray said. “There was a lot of negative noise, and we wanted to ignore that. The hard thing now is to ignore all the positives and people wanting to pat you on the back and tell you that you’re great and this and that. We have to ignore that, too, and just do what we did last year.” [AJC]
Former Missouri LB died in auto accident in Houston. Marcus Bacon was driving southbound West 610 when he drove over the curb and hit the railroad tracks that made his vehicle flip several times. Bacon was a DB back in 2002 from Houston. He ended up being an all-conference LB, and he was a friend of many former players on the team, including Chase Daniel and Sean Weatherspoon. [Kansas City]
