Maurice Clarett

• imex99

  

  In 2009, Joe Moglia, then the CEO of TD Ameritrade, quit his job to coach football. He wanted to coach a college team. But no athletic director wanted him. So he took a job, in 2011, as head coach of the UFL's Omaha Nighthawks, a team that included former Buckeye Maurice Clarett. Moglia had an unorthodox style: He ran a once-a-week class called "Life After Football," and after training camp dinners, he would make everyone stand up and tell his life story. Forbes'sMonte Burke trailed Moglia—who has since earned the head job at Coastal Carolina—during the coach's time in Omaha. What follows is an excerpt from Burke's book, 4th and Goal: One Man's Quest to Recapture His Dream.
  
  In the evenings, Joe makes the last half hour of dinner mandatory for everyone on the team. The reason: Each night, for the duration of training camp, he will be asking the players and coaches, one by one, to stand up at dinner and introduce themselves. He wants them to talk not only about their careers in football but also about their lives. A few of the more bashful players will end up talking for only 30 seconds or so. But most of the folks jump at the opportunity to share their stories.
  
  The players talk about their jobs outside of football (quarterback Eric Crouch sells medical devices that help women deal with vaginal prolapse), their injuries (nose tackle Dusty Dvoracek had a promising NFL career derailed when he tore a bicep while tackling the Minnesota Vikings' Adrian Peterson), and their broken home lives (both of running back Noel Devine's parents were dead of AIDS by the time he was 11).
  
  On the seventh night of training camp, Maurice Clarett, the troubled former Ohio State star, stands to speak at dinner. This is the introduction that many have been waiting for. The dining room goes utterly silent; there are no forks scraping plates, no ice tinkling in water glasses.
  
  Clarett speaks in a raspy, barely audible whisper. His voice, like Mike Tyson's lisp, doesn't seem to fit his body—5-11 and 230 muscled pounds—nor does its softness jibe with what the public knows about his past.
  
  He begins by telling the room that football was his first true love. He played the sport nearly every afternoon in his Youngstown, Ohio, neighborhood. When it rained he played carpet football with his brothers inside the house. He would pretend to be Emmitt Smith or Thurman Thomas.
  
  But trouble happened to be his other passion. He was arrested multiple times before he was 14 years old, mainly, he says, because he was trying to impress the older kids in the neighborhood. In the eighth grade he was arrested for breaking and entering a house. While attempting to flee the scene, he jumped out of a second-story window and hit his head. He got 13 stitches for the wound. That's why, since high school, he has always worn the number 13 on the football field.
  
  He was sent to a juvenile detention center. There he met a high school football coach who took him under his wing, and who intervened on his behalf with the judge and negotiated a house arrest. Clarett worked out with the coach every day after school.
  In high school, Clarett was a dynamo on the field. He rushed for 248 yards in one of his first games as a freshman. He says he never really went to class, and he was allowed to slip through the academic cracks because of his football ability. In his senior year he was named the best prep player in the state of Ohio. He was heavily recruited, but decided to stay near home and attend Ohio State. He loved the coach there, Jim Tressel.
  
  Clarett made the team as a freshman as a backup running back. Tressel told him that in the team's first game—at home against Texas Tech—Clarett would get three series of work. "I did nothing in my first two series," says Clarett. But on the third one, he broke a long run. The home crowd went crazy. "The fans put you in games, at least at Ohio State," he says. He finished that game with 175 rushing yards and three touchdowns.
  
  He was a hard worker in practice and in games. But off the field, he was living a completely different life. "I took golf, fishing, and softball as classes," Clarett says. "Away from class, anything you can think of I did in my 13 months at Ohio State." Drugs and women were two of the things. Cars were another—he owned three of them at a time, including a brand-new Cadillac and Lexus. "I was living the NFL life in college," he says. "I got paid more in college than I do now in the UFL."
  
  In the 2003 national championship game against Miami, Clarett made the two crucial plays that led to Ohio State's win: He stripped the ball from Sean Taylor's hands after the Miami safety had intercepted a pass in his own end zone, which led to three important points for the Buckeyes. Then he scored the championship-winning touchdown in overtime. The sky seemed like the only limit for Clarett.
  
  Instead the sky fell on him. Clarett was suspended from the team for receiving what were deemed "improper benefits." He also falsely alleged that $10,000 worth of goods had been stolen from him. (He later pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of failure to aid a law enforcement official.) Clarett tried to enter the NFL Draft. But by NFL rules, a player had to be at least three years out of high school to become eligible. He sued. His case eventually went to the Supreme Court. He lost.
  
  The next two years were lost in a fog of drug and alcohol use. "I would ride around in my car carrying life sentences, with pounds of weed and bricks of cocaine," he says. In 2005 he worked out at the NFL's Draft Combine and performed woefully. He was nevertheless drafted by the Denver Broncos in the third round that year. In Denver's training camp, he says, he was partying hard at nights and clashing with his coaches during the day. He was cut before the end of camp.
  
  And that was when the real trouble began. "I was popping pills and getting paranoid. I was robbing everyone I knew," he says. In January 2006 he was arrested in Columbus for allegedly robbing a man and woman at gunpoint and taking $150 and a cell phone; the man had pressed charges. Clarett's trial was postponed until September.
  
  Clarett says he didn't want to go to jail. So he attempted to pay off the man whom he had robbed. He wanted him to drop the charges. The man refused to be bought. On a night one month before the trail, Clarett's life literally came to its crossroads.
  Clarett jumped into his car wearing Kevlar body armor and carrying a loaded assault rifle and three handguns. He drank half a bottle of Grey Goose vodka as he drove. He missed his intended exit off the freeway. He got off at the next exit and made an illegal U-turn. A cop car happened to be there. The cops pulled him over and used Mace to subdue him.
  
  That U-turn may have saved his life and the lives of several others. He'd been on his way to that man's house.
  He was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. "Contrary to popular belief, prison does not give you street cred. Anyone who glorifies it is an idiot," he says. "It only lets your dumb ass know that you got caught doing something wrong."
  
  But prison turned out to be a good thing for Clarett. It was where the fog finally started to lift. "I cleared my head, away from the drugs and drinking," he says. "Suffering causes you to mature." He became a voracious reader, knocking out 150 books in prison, including the works of Tolstoy, Twain, and Confucius. He became particularly interested in finance and subscribed to Forbes,Fortune, and the Wall Street Journal, teaching himself about the stock market. He read everything he could about his new hero, Warren Buffett. He started a blog, The Mind of Maurice Clarett, filled with aphorisms that he read over the prison phone to his girlfriend, who posted them. He was released from prison early for good behavior, to a halfway house. He tried out for the Nighthawks in 2010 and made the team, playing sparingly while struggling mightily to get back into shape.
  
  Clarett ends his introduction by talking about his long road to redemption, the joy he finds in simple freedoms like watching his 5-year-old daughter run around the house. He talks about the positive example he wants to set for people, to help them avoid the trouble he'd found in his life.
  
  "I don't want people to say ‘Don't be like Maurice Clarett,'" he says. "In fact, I want the opposite. I want people to see me now and say they want to be like me. And I'm working every day to earn that."
  
  As Clarett wraps up, there are audible gasps and a few whispered "holy shit"s in the room. Some of the coaches stare at Clarett with stunned, almost fearful looks on their faces. There is a brief silent pause as Clarett sits down. Then the players and coaches slowly disperse.
• Raw Dawgin' it

  

  tl:dr just post the link
• Heretic

  

  One giant wall of text with no line breaks.
  
  Not. Going. To. Read.
• Tiernan

  Good for Mo. Redemption is what America is all about.
• WebFire

  WTF I was too late.
• WebFire

  I think everyone knew that he was a headcase, but I really didn't know just how bad it was for him. Sounds like he's gotten better. Hopefully he can maintain that and live a decent life now.
  
  I also think it brings to life just what college life is like for these athletes, at least at the "big" football schools.
• sleeper

  

  tl;dr
• Fly4Fun

  

  http://deadspin.com/5967649/how-maurice-clarett-lost-his-way-bombed-out-of-the-nfl-planned-a-murder-missed-an-exit-and-found-himself-and-warren-buffett-in-prison
  
  For those who don't enjoy walls of text.
• gut

  If you were that witness that sends a chill up your spine...alive because he missed his exit. Crazy.
• FatHobbit

  

  WebFire;1341973 wrote:I think everyone knew that he was a headcase, but I really didn't know just how bad it was for him. Sounds like he's gotten better. Hopefully he can maintain that and live a decent life now.

  
  
  I hopeful he has his shit together, but I wouldn't bet on it.
  

  WebFire;1341973 wrote:I also think it brings to life just what college life is like for these athletes, at least at the "big" football schools.

  It makes me wonder if EVERY player is getting paid or just some of them.
• Commander of Awesome

  

  Short version, Clarret was an idiot and changed his behavior in prison.
• FatHobbit

  

  Commander of Awesome;1341981 wrote:Short version, Clarret was an idiot and says he changed his behavior in prison.

  FIFY
• Pick6

  

  wish the best for MoC
• Midstate01

  

  FatHobbit;1341985 wrote:FIFY

  
  It can change in a quick second if he messes up. But since his release he's done nothing but good. Hopefully he can maintain that.
• vball10set

  WebFire;1341973 wrote:I think everyone knew that he was a headcase, but I really didn't know just how bad it was for him. Sounds like he's gotten better. Hopefully he can maintain that and live a decent life now.

  Commander of Awesome;1341981 wrote:Short version, Clarret was an idiot and changed his behavior in prison.

  Pick6;1341994 wrote:wish the best for MoC

  These
• O-Trap

  

  
  
  And if I'M saying that, it's a problem.
• sherm03

  

  gut;1341977 wrote:If you were that witness that sends a chill up your spine...alive because he missed his exit. Crazy.

  That's what I was thinking. If I'm that guy that he robbed, that story would have scared the ever-living shit out of me.
• Speedofsand

  

  "I took golf, fishing, and softball as classes," Clarett says. "Away from class, anything you can think of I did in my 13 months at Ohio State." Drugs and women were two of the things. Cars were another—he owned three of them at a time, including a brand-new Cadillac and Lexus. "I was living the NFL life in college," he says. "I got paid more in college than I do now in the UFL."
  
  Tressel was always dirty. O$U should have gotten hammered by the NCAA years ago.
• sportchampps

  "I got paid more in college than I do now in the UFL."

  I wonder how much he was getting paid in college. It really sounds like he has turned his life around and so far he hasnt gotten in any more trouble. He is probably the most talented freshmen I have seen in College Football. He won the Buckeyes a National Title and I wish him the best.
• sportchampps

  "I took golf, fishing, and softball as classes,"

  Nothing wrong with that. At OU I took a few classes like that as well. My brother went to OSU when Cooper was the coach and he took Coaching Soccer his Senior Year and it was 90% football players he said.
• Midstate01

  

  And here we go...
• Zoltan

  Speedofsand;1342085 wrote:"I took golf, fishing, and softball as classes," Clarett says. "Away from class, anything you can think of I did in my 13 months at Ohio State." Drugs and women were two of the things. Cars were another—he owned three of them at a time, including a brand-new Cadillac and Lexus. "I was living the NFL life in college," he says. "I got paid more in college than I do now in the UFL."
  
  Tressel was always dirty. O$U should have gotten hammered by the NCAA years ago.

  What does that have to do with Tressel? He was looking for handouts from the Columbus and Warren communities and he found them. Every great college player looking for hand outs can find them.
• Zoltan

  It makes me wonder if EVERY player is getting paid or just some of them.[/QUOTE]
  
  Every good college player looking for a hand out can find it. Getting paid assumes it was part of his arrangement to play at OSU, like they agreed to pay him to come there. He has denied that many times.
• FatHobbit

  

  Zoltan;1342101 wrote:Every good college player looking for a hand out can find it. Getting paid assumes it was part of his arrangement to play at OSU, like they agreed to pay him to come there. He has denied that many times.

  I don't doubt that any player looking for hand outs can find them. I wonder if there are any who don't.
• said_aouita

  

  Heretic;1341968 wrote:One giant wall of text with no line breaks.
  
  Not. Going. To. Read.

  
  :thumbup: