Subscribe today! On one side of him, an Auburn teammate is nodding off, too sick and tired from his high to stay awake. Another teammate is holding his stomach and retching while his brain burns. Dyer, a year-old running back coming off a freshman All-American season in , is celebrating spring break at a friend's apartment, drinking beer and smoking chemically coated leaves that are sold in gas stations under the name Spice.
But the mood turns serious when fellow freshman teammate Shaun Kitchens asks: "Man, let me use your strap. We need to go hit a lick. The "strap" is a. But Dyer, according to records of his subsequent interview with police, isn't interested in committing a robbery on this night, or any night. Not when he's just two months removed from single-handedly marching Auburn down the football field in the final seconds of the BCS title game, the school's first national championship since Not when two more seasons stand between him and a first-round spot in the NFL draft.
But as he will later recall under oath, Dyer isn't in his apartment long before he's visited by another freshman who was partying with the group earlier. Antonio Goodwin, a wide receiver from Atlanta hoping to work his way into the starting lineup as a sophomore, is usually reserved.
But at this moment, he seems antsy, eyes darting. For a second time, the star back refuses. But Goodwin isn't listening, and in the early hours of March 11, , coach Gene Chizik will awaken to an avalanche of bad news that will eventually reveal what had been successfully kept under wraps during an undefeated season: Some of the very stars who delivered Auburn a BCS title were using the most devastating synthetic drug sweeping America.
In August , as the Tigers prepared to kick off the season against Arkansas State, director of sports medicine Joseph Petrone made copies of a newspaper article he'd just read about Spice, a chemically altered incense being sold over the counter at gas stations and mini-marts around Alabama. But Petrone wasn't alone. Athletic departments from coast to coast were just learning of Spice. Its active chemical is a vestige of research done in the s by a Clemson University researcher named John W.
