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They had it all until he blew it. Ohio State was one of the top three programs in the country, until he hurt the school in the worst possible way. One person decided to put himself before his team and his program and now the school must suffer the consequences. Every Ohio State fan in the world has a right to be furious with the one man responsible for turning Ohio State football from a thing of pride into the biggest scandal in college sports, head coach Jim Tressel.
Too many in this country are too quick to blame Clarett. I hear the same argument again and again, from both fans and journalists alike. Most agree with this sentiment from Paul Daugherty from the Cincinnati Enquirer:
I don't know about you, but when I was in college, hot-plating dinner, scraping the couch cushions for gas money, washing dishes in the cafeteria and spending several hours a night studying without being told, things were a little different…
All Clarett had to do in this little fantasy world, was play football.
And he's . . . complaining?
Excuse me while I lie down in a cool place.”- Paul Daugherty, Nov. 12
I stopped reading after the last line, but it probably rambles on about how he had to walk to school uphill both ways in three feet of snow. I know that’s how it used to be “in the good old days”, but things have changed. You can no longer get dinner, a kazoo, and an umbrella for a nickel and still have enough change left over to buy a new suit. It’s time to accept that the college game has changed, but not necessarily for the worst.
Maurice Clarett was given perks during his time at OSU. Who cares? He drove a few cars, got a few extra bucks, and had someone pick up his phone bill. The fact that people are outraged about this is comical. Maurice Clarett is not the first, and certainly not the last, player to receive this treatment. The conditions described by Clarett exist for most star players at nearly every major school. This is how things are done, and it’s not even a bad thing. Unfortunately, self-righteous journalists would rather live in their own “fantasy world”, where college athletics is about the love of the game and academics, and not about players focusing on their dreams of playing professionally.
People are infuriated that Maurice could get a summer job being paid to watch people hang drywall, but isn’t that what half of construction workers do anyway (road construction crews are the worst, I think there is one person working for every two playing horseshoes)? Whether or not you want to accept it, this happens at every school, and nothing is wrong about it. The schools make millions off of these players; the least they could do is turn the other way when this happens. The alternative is allowing players to enter the NFL without having to be three years removed from high school, which would devastate college programs.
Ohio State never wins a national championship without Maurice Clarett. Tressel had to know it, which makes it even more surprising that he would sacrifice his best recruit to play the role of the whipping boy for OSU’s corrupt program. Clarett literally took one for the team during that investigation and saved the hide of both the program, and more importantly, the coach he thought had his back. Tressel would ultimately abandon his role as mentor and teacher to Clarett; favoring rather to play the role of Brutus to Maurice’s Caesar.
Maurice isn’t a saint, but he’s nowhere near the a-hole he’s being portrayed as by Andy Geiger and the majority of the media. Clarett was a special player, but no different than players of his calibers elsewhere around the country. If Tressel had refrained from badmouthing Clarett and blackballing him from the program, Ohio State wouldn’t be in this mess. Tressel needs to take care of a guy like Clarett, if only to make sure he doesn’t pull the rug out from under OSU the way he did.
It doesn’t make any sense to me to see Tressel play Clarett the way he did. Its possible that Tressel and company thought Maurice’s head was getting too big in his first season, but if that’s the reason they drove Clarett away then Ohio State deserves whatever punishment they get. The problems with Tressel and Clarett started with them not allowing him to go home for the funeral of a friend.
Tressel and OSU tried to explain it by saying that Maurice didn’t fill out the correct paperwork, but that was simply garbage. It was an excuse, and it was a bogus power play by Ohio State. Tressel could’ve gotten Maurice around the red tape if he really cared about his player. Was the “proper paperwork” was filed for the car that Tressel arranged for Clarett?
It didn’t have to be like this. Sports fans and journalists alike could continue to live in their fantasy that college football players play for the love of the game and for their scholarship and nothing else. They could have continued to pretend that the top players in the country aren’t paid and given the same perks that Maurice received. Instead, they have to realize that a nickel just isn’t worth as much as it used to be.
Mark Chalifoux is a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. You can reach him at Rockne48@und.com
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