Elephantine Alabama defensive tackle Terrence Cody, 10 games removed from Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, says he's done his time:

No "official" Bama media is on top of this yet -- Cody was not among the Tide underclassmen reported to have filled out paperwork to gauge their draft status -- but firsthand Facebook with dozens of anguished fans registering their protest is as solid as a newspaper report; Cody's junior college background suggests he's not exactly the bookish type, anyway. At any rate, he's too big to fall out of the first round and will probably be the first defensive tackle off the board, if his total lack of mobility doesn't turn into a meme among easily-spooked scouts during workouts.

Never will "We Hardly Knew Ye" be more appropriate than for a one-and-done All-American. Cody's addition to the middle of the Tide line was the main factor in Bama improving its run defense from 28th in 2007 to fourth in the nation this year, and was especially key in conference games: SEC offenses averaged 3.9 yards per carry and 140 yards per game on the Tide in '07, but only 3.1 and 90, respectively, this year. Clemson notoriously was held to zero yards with Cody clogging the middle in the opener, and the only teams that topped four yards per carry on Alabama all season, Ole Miss and LSU, did so with Cody either largely missing from the lineup (he left the game with a knee injury against Ole Miss in the third quarter, after which the Rebels scored 17 of their 20 points) or at less than full strength (LSU was his first game back in the lineup). He's two tackles in one, a double team magnet to the extent of almost representing a twelfth man, and if he follows the note he posted at 1:28 a.m. today, his 360 (wink wink) pounds will not be replaced with one man.

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UPDATE: The Birminham News' Ian Rapoport says not so fast my friend -- the "going pro" message on Cody's page was courtesy of ... a prankster girlfriend?

Alabama nose tackle Terrence Cody is returning to Alabama for his senior season. The All-American nose tackle said he's not submitting his information to the NFL draft advisory board, though he did consider it.
[...]
If you're friends with him on Facebook, you would have noticed last night that his status message said, "Terrence Cody... is going pro."
[...]
The result was a tremendous joke, one that may not have been funny to Tide fans.

"All right, my girlfriend was on my account last night, and she put that on there, and everybody started freaking out," Cody said, clearly amused, though maybe slightly embarrassed. "I was on the phone with her when she put it on, and two minutes after that, I got message after message after message with everybody freaking out."

Indeed -- if you can't trust a man's Facebook page, what can you trust?

So Alabama's run defense, with Cody and Donta' Hightower and Rolando McClain in tow, should continue to rock into 2009. Girlfriends of athletes of America, why do you do this to us?

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Hat tip: Pete, and Todd on the update.