It's time to pick up, move on to basketball

I suppose this is one way to get people talking about Columbia County football. Unfortunately, this isn't exactly the best way to do it.

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The attention should have been on Evans High School. The Knights earned a first-round home game in the state playoffs for the first time in 12 years.

Instead, a pair of scandals at Lakeside and Greenbrier have been the topic of the week.

So what's my opinion? Are the punishments that have been handed down appropriate? Has everything been handled correctly?

Let's just say I'm glad I'm not the one who has to make those decisions.

Just as the leaders of Columbia County's schools have taken their time in coming up with punishments, I'm reserving my judgement until all the facts and decisions have been made.

They're not jumping to conclusions; why should I? For that matter, why should you?

I like to think that most people are taking their time, giving Columbia County's school administrators and leaders a chance to wade through all the rumors and letting the system do what it is set up to do.

Those who are jumping to conclusions have hit the Internet in full force.

The attention given to the Lakeside situation has been astounding. I did a quick sweep Thursday morning just to see exactly how much attention people are giving it. The video of the illegal play posted on YouTube had been viewed 15,842 times. The original news story posted online had 565 comments -- more than any other story in the history of The Augusta Chronicle 's Web site.

The Greenbrier story was still fairly new by Thursday morning. No doubt, it will snowball into its own attention-grabbing phenomenon in due time.

So where do we go from here?

Of course, I've already defended former Lakeside athletic director Jody Grooms' character. I still do, but I can't defend the act. It appears the same is true for Greenbrier's Scott Chadwick.

Punishments have been handed out, but only after time was taken for the proper amount of scrutiny and investigation to get most, if not all, of the whole story. More punishments are on the way.

Until then, I'm content to sit back and see how this all plays out.

In the meantime, can we just please play some basketball?