Former Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett, who won his court battle to overturn the NFL’s draft eligibility rules, has opened the door for players to make an NBA-like leap into the professional ranks as college sophomores, freshmen or even straight from high school.
While the NFL is in the process of appealing the U.S. District Court’s ruling in the case, players who would have formerly been ineligible for the upcoming draft now have until today to declare themselves available.
Clarett’s name and reputation, already sullied by his well-documented difficulties in filling out police reports and classroom tests, probably won’t get any better by going down in sports history as the pied piper of NFL post-adolescent draft availability.
While Curt Flood opened the door to baseball free agency, Clarett may have opened a door that many may soon wish had remained closed.
Then again, the average high school senior — usually not up to the challenge of facing players two or three years older than them on the collegiate level — surely wouldn’t think they could just skip college and go straight to the league. Would they?
The NBA, having already traveled this road in the past, knows all too well that they would.
But for every LeBron, Kobe, Garnett or Amare Stoudamire who makes the leap from high school to the big time, there’s a Lenny Cooke — a player who passes on college and isn’t selected for the draft, or a Leon Smith — a player not ready emotionally ready for the NBA spotlight.
Ironically, this leads you right back to Clarett.
If first impressions are as accurate as most people seem to believe they are, the young man has certainly done himself no favors with his behavior off the gridiron during his time at Ohio State.
Though instrumental in the Buckeyes’ national championship run, he was also infamous for the bright light his shenanigans shined on the program soon after — in other words, Clarett is a double-edged sword in every sense of the term.
A client of super sports agent Drew Rosenhaus, who either convinced or cajoled the Buffalo Bills into using a first-round pick to snatch up an injured Willis McGahee, Clarett decided to make NFL scouts wait until his own personal workout in April in order to judge his talent instead of working out at the NFL scouting combine last week.
Winning friends and influencing people already, aren’t we, Maurice?
Just as the Bills may have better used that first-round pick to protect quarterback Drew Bledsoe, who has been sacked 103 times in the past two years, whoever decides to take on Clarett had better spend more time on their own homework than listening to Rosenhaus.
Remember, you only have one season in which to judge whether your favorite team makes him its newest multi-millionaire. And it just happens to be one in which he showed he wasn’t the most durable running back in the world.
NFL running backs take a pounding on a game-by-basis and some NFL lines aren’t as good as the one Clarett ran behind in college to the tune of 1,237 yards and 16 touchdowns. Yet, he still missed three of the only 12 games he’s had since high school because of injury.
This all sounds like one of those NBA arguments about a player’s upside and is proof positive that there will be many more conversations about other players in his position in the near future — perhaps even sooner than that, as University of Southern California sophomore wide-out phenom Mike Williams reportedly Wednesday became the first player to follow Clarett’s lead into the NFL.
All this isn’t to say that I’m against Clarett’s decision or the court’s ruling when it comes to him; it’s more to say that I hope he’s ready for all this because his competition won’t care one way or the other.
LeBron and Carmelo’s game is nothing like the NFL and trying to be like them there is going to really, really hurt.
http://www.zwire.com
While the NFL is in the process of appealing the U.S. District Court’s ruling in the case, players who would have formerly been ineligible for the upcoming draft now have until today to declare themselves available.
Clarett’s name and reputation, already sullied by his well-documented difficulties in filling out police reports and classroom tests, probably won’t get any better by going down in sports history as the pied piper of NFL post-adolescent draft availability.
While Curt Flood opened the door to baseball free agency, Clarett may have opened a door that many may soon wish had remained closed.
Then again, the average high school senior — usually not up to the challenge of facing players two or three years older than them on the collegiate level — surely wouldn’t think they could just skip college and go straight to the league. Would they?
The NBA, having already traveled this road in the past, knows all too well that they would.
But for every LeBron, Kobe, Garnett or Amare Stoudamire who makes the leap from high school to the big time, there’s a Lenny Cooke — a player who passes on college and isn’t selected for the draft, or a Leon Smith — a player not ready emotionally ready for the NBA spotlight.
Ironically, this leads you right back to Clarett.
If first impressions are as accurate as most people seem to believe they are, the young man has certainly done himself no favors with his behavior off the gridiron during his time at Ohio State.
Though instrumental in the Buckeyes’ national championship run, he was also infamous for the bright light his shenanigans shined on the program soon after — in other words, Clarett is a double-edged sword in every sense of the term.
A client of super sports agent Drew Rosenhaus, who either convinced or cajoled the Buffalo Bills into using a first-round pick to snatch up an injured Willis McGahee, Clarett decided to make NFL scouts wait until his own personal workout in April in order to judge his talent instead of working out at the NFL scouting combine last week.
Winning friends and influencing people already, aren’t we, Maurice?
Just as the Bills may have better used that first-round pick to protect quarterback Drew Bledsoe, who has been sacked 103 times in the past two years, whoever decides to take on Clarett had better spend more time on their own homework than listening to Rosenhaus.
Remember, you only have one season in which to judge whether your favorite team makes him its newest multi-millionaire. And it just happens to be one in which he showed he wasn’t the most durable running back in the world.
NFL running backs take a pounding on a game-by-basis and some NFL lines aren’t as good as the one Clarett ran behind in college to the tune of 1,237 yards and 16 touchdowns. Yet, he still missed three of the only 12 games he’s had since high school because of injury.
This all sounds like one of those NBA arguments about a player’s upside and is proof positive that there will be many more conversations about other players in his position in the near future — perhaps even sooner than that, as University of Southern California sophomore wide-out phenom Mike Williams reportedly Wednesday became the first player to follow Clarett’s lead into the NFL.
All this isn’t to say that I’m against Clarett’s decision or the court’s ruling when it comes to him; it’s more to say that I hope he’s ready for all this because his competition won’t care one way or the other.
LeBron and Carmelo’s game is nothing like the NFL and trying to be like them there is going to really, really hurt.
http://www.zwire.com
