Thursday afternoon’s arrest of four former football players is another black eye for a program that has seen too much negative publicity in recent years.

Tyrann Mathieu, Jordan Jefferson, Karnell Hatcher and Derrick Bryant — all key members of LSU’s team during its run to the BCS National Championship Game last season — were taken into custody and arrested after getting busted with enough marijuana for one of them, Bryant, to be charged with possession with intent to distribute.

Throw your views on pot being a harmless drug out the window. An athlete being charged with intent to distribute is some heavy stuff.

And these athletes are not far enough removed from their time at LSU for this not to be a blemish on the University and its football program.

Whether or not you want to admit it, LSU football is this city’s and this University’s identity. Outsiders do not associate Baton Rouge with being the state capitol or the title of a catchy Garth Brooks song, but with the boys in the Purple and Gold out there on a Saturday night.

That association keeps taking a hit as LSU has been in the national spotlight more for its current and former players’ transgressions than it has been for maintaining its perch as one of the elite teams in football for the last two seasons.

Think about how absurd that is.

LSU put together one of the most impressive regular seasons in college football history last season, made even more impressive by seemingly overcoming the adversity it faced at the beginning of the season when Jefferson was indicted for his role in a brawl at Shady’s Bar in August 2011.

The Tigers lost in an embarrassing fashion to Alabama in the BCS Championship Game, but there was renewed hope to begin this season with a new quarterback and a No. 1 preseason ranking in the coaches’ poll.

And even though the Tigers have rolled to a 7-1 record and a No. 6 ranking this season, they’ve been doing it in the shadow of Mathieu’s Aug. 10 dismissal.

Now they’re faced with the difficulty of getting past this mess. You can add this to a growing list of infractions by LSU football players past and present, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why.

Mathieu will forever be an enigma. How did he let himself get involved in this situation after everything that has happened in the last four months?

I wanted to believe that he could rebound from his dismissal in a positive way. Maybe he could have helped turn around the LSU image he helped tarnish. But that obviously is not going to happen anymore.

He might not have any involvement in the situation other than giving his old buddies a place to do their business. That doesn’t matter. He will forever go down in the books as someone who could not control himself rather than the explosive Heisman Trophy candidate.

Jefferson has the most to lose from this. Even if he’s not drafted, Mathieu will still probably get a shot to make an NFL roster.

Whatever minuscule chance Jefferson had at prolonging his football career is toast. And does it surprise you in the least that it was his boneheaded move that alerted the cops to the situation in the first place?

I sincerely hope current and future LSU players can look at this as a lesson. An open page in the “what not to do” playbook.

You can bet that this, instead of the long-awaited rematch with No. 1 Alabama, will be the hottest topic as the current players try to focus on the game next Saturday while their former teammates make the headlines.

The views expressed in this column do not represent those of The Daily Reveille.