Somebody once said that any publicity is good publicity. Or something like that.

I offer Arkansas basketball and a few other SEC programs as a rebuttal to that notion...

Recent news of five player suspensions has been a hot topic not just locally, but nationally. Big-time blogs Huffingtonpost.com and Deadspin.com picked up on the story.

Huffingtonpost.com went with the straight Associated Press news story. Deadspin.com was a little less kind.

The Razorbacks will suit up just nine players for their opener on Friday, and five guys in all have been suspended, the penalty for momentarily turning the program into Caligula of the Ozarks.

Arkansas isn't alone in its misery, though.

Ole Miss is soon to be the site of a Ku Klux Klan rally. Klansmen are upset about Chancellor Dan Jones asking that "From Dixie With Love" be removed from the band's playlist because fans were chanting "The South will rise again!"

And one of the school's "student leaders" was caught on a cell phone camera dropping the nuclear bomb of racial insults. We won't link to it here, but it's out there.

All the Rebel flags and Dixie stuff going on at Ole Miss must make recruiting a challenge. This can't help the cause.

Tennessee faces Ole Miss this weekend. And as much as Vols fans would probably love to make fun of the Rebels' for their misery, they've got plenty of issues in Knoxville.

It seems three freshmen football players were arrested for armed robbery. This comes less than 24 hours after Lane Kiffin bragged none of his players had been in major trouble with the law.

Clay Travis has an excellent column on the situation.