For the best: LeMay's prep career is over

Christian LeMay and his family have decided the star high school quarterback won’t play football anywhere this fall. His prep career is over.

Given the difficult circumstances for everyone involved, I think that’s for the best.

LeMay was suspended for 40 days by Charlotte-Mecklenburg school officials for what sources have told The Observer was a sexual encounter with a female student on campus. The LeMays have lost their appeal of that punishment. In a letter released to The Observer Tuesday, the LeMay family called the CMS punishment “merciless.”

Christian LeMay quarterbacked Butler to the school’s first-ever state championship in 2009 as a junior, throwing 44 touchdown passes against only two interceptions. The Sporting News ranked him the No.1 college quarterback prospect in the nation. He has already committed to Georgia, and still plans to graduate from high school early and enroll at Georgia in January 2011.

LeMay just won’t be playing football anywhere, and I think that’s OK – even though I, like many other sports fans in the area, would love to see him throw the ball around a few more times before he goes to college.

But there will be plenty of time for that. LeMay will certainly play – and maybe star – at Georgia. He may be in the NFL one day. We’ll get plenty of chances to see him.

To suddenly transfer to a local private school or one of the South Carolina powerhouse high school football programs to avoid the CMS suspension would have made LeMay look like a mercenary more than anything else – a hired football gun, willing to go anywhere for another dose of the Friday-night spotlight.

Instead, LeMay will take what must surely come as a welcome turn out of that spotlight. Butler will be OK. The Bulldogs are deep, with a team including LeMay’s younger brother Uriah at wide receiver and another fine quarterback in Riley Ferguson.

Christian LeMay will be OK – his scholarship to Georgia still awaits. I surely hope the female involved in this encounter will be OK.

It is best for everyone to move on from this regrettable incident, and LeMay making a last-minute transfer just to play a few more months of high school football would not serve much purpose.

“We are fully confident that his best days are still yet to come,” the LeMay family said of Christian in their statement Wednesday. Let’s all hope that is true, because the past few months haven’t been very good.