Maurice Clarett...A Sports Tragedy

By now just about everyone has heard the story of Maurice Clarett, a former Ohio State University star running back who came up from a rough upbringing to become friends with LeBron James and to arrive on the cusp of similar superstardom. Maurice, however, ran into trouble with the law at OSU, unsuccessfully challenged the NFL's rule that players must be out of high school three years before entering the league, became a 3rd round pick of the Denver Broncos, and was cut before the end of training camp. How could someone who almost single handedly led the Buckeyes to a national title over the 17 point favorite Miami Hurricanes in the Fiesta Bowl less than three years ago come to such an unfortunate end...? Now Clarett sits in an Ohio jail on a $5 million dollar bond, undergoing a mental evaluation, awaiting trial any day now for a robbery from 2005. He also faces a variety of state and federal charges, including weapons charges, from this year, with trial on those charges likely sometime in 2007. These 3 ESPN columns (here, here, and here) tell the cumulative story as well as anything I have read, and it's a sad cautionary tale of too much stardom and fame too soon combined with a lack of maturity and support system. Could Maurice Clarett have been the next Jim Brown? As the owl in the Tootsie Pop commercial says, "The world may never know." Read it all if you can stand it.

1.) "And now what? He had no money, although he claims he's made some periodic cash doing autograph sessions. His rap friends had financed him, with the idea he'd pay them back with his NFL riches. But there were no riches. He left for his hometown of Youngstown, thinking he'd go to NFL Europe and get himself back on the field, get himself financially liquid. But then there was his New Year's Eve arrest in 2006, and his pending court case. Not a team would touch him. "He'll never play again,'' said a league executive. So how was he going to pay these people back? How much did he owe? Were these people on his back? Were these the threats his lawyer spoke about? Does this explain the assault rifle? The bulletproof vest? The phone call to me?

So it all makes sense, all the contriteness, all the thank-yous, all the quasi-goodbyes. If someone was coming after Maurice Clarett, that meant someone was coming after his baby girl. And if someone was coming after his baby girl, he was going to do anything he could to stop it. If that meant carrying four guns and wearing a bulletproof vest, so be it. Maybe, Tuesday night, he knew it was over. Maybe that's why he told me, "I'm a young man going through stress. I'm a person who was scheduled to make millions and didn't make 'em."

2.) But once reports of this compensation began to leak into the media, Ohio State predictably wanted nothing more to do with Clarett. It had its national championship. It did not want NCAA probation.

"So Brown and several other people far smarter than Clarett encouraged him to challenge the NFL draft rules in court. He did. He won. District Judge Shira Sheindlein basically laughed the NFL's lawyers out of her courtroom. She basically said the NFL was denying Clarett his basic American right -- the opportunity to earn a living, to succeed or fail in pro football after no more than one year of college.

Clarett briefly was hailed as a crusader, a pioneer, college football's Curt Flood. But of course, the big, bad NFL took its case to appeals court and won. And eventually, the Supreme Court upheld that decision. The NFL didn't have a better argument than Clarett did, but it had better lawyers and more influence. He would have to sit out two full years before he could enter the draft. Two. long. years. And of course, a kid without much of a work ethic got fat, lost his football edge and his way, was lucky to be drafted in the third round by Denver's Mike Shanahan, then failed quickly for all the world to ridicule."

3.) "What if the fact that the police caught Clarett when they did turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to him in his life? Seeing the direction his life was going? The direction his SUV was headed?

What if all of this is his blessing?

"This arrest may save his life," XM radio's "House of Sports" host Terry Tuff said. "It's time for Maurice Clarett to stop dreaming about being a professional football player and start trying to become a professional human being. This situation, God might be working with him. He wasn't going to the cash station, that's for sure," continued Pruitt, who is now running the football program for the Chicago public schools. "This arrest saved him. The way he was dressed, the time of night, what he had in the car, he was a man on rage. If they hadn't gotten to him when they did, there's no telling how his night would have ended."

Four loaded guns, bulletproof vest, half-empty bottle of vodka, life-cleansing phone calls to a friend (LeBron), a writer (Tom Friend), his agent (Nick Mango), his former coach at OSU (Jim Tressel) and the owner of a team he had signed to play for in the Eastern Indoor Football League (Jim Terry), a holster in a backpack, a CD of children's songs sung by prison inmates, while only blocks away from the home of a woman who was slated to testify against (and identify) him in a pending case in which he was awaiting trial on two counts of aggravated battery, four counts of robbery and one count of carrying a concealed weapon.

All signs directed toward the end of something. His life or someone else's. Something only a blessing can block. Because at the rate Clarett's life was spiraling out of control, death was not far away. Not far from next. And he was not far from becoming a more highly celebrated version of Rae Carrruth. Or worse, the next O.J. ...

Two years before Clarett entered the halls of Ohio State University -- where some say his life began and others argue that it really ended -- Harry Edwards, in an interview with ColorLines magazine, discussed what eventually could be Clarett's eulogy. "The overwhelming majority of black athletes come out of the lower echelons of black society," the professor said. "I don't think it is accidental when you look at the inordinate number of blacks in jail and the proportionate number of blacks on athletic teams. You are essentially looking at the same guy. They both have numbers; they are both in uniforms, and they both belong to gangs. They only call one the Crips, or the Bloods, while they call the other team the 49ers, Warriors, A's, or the Giants. They are all in pursuit of respect. They all, at one level or another, keep score. The parallels are all there. It is the same guy."

A 6-foot, 230-pound running back who once wore the number 13 and rushed for 1,237 yards in a one-year career at football's second highest level, scoring 18 touchdowns and never losing a game, finds his way to the criminal justice system. To become a part of it. For possibly the next 10-15 years. Minimum time, maximum security."