Posted on 12/30/2002 12:44:24 PM PST by willieroe
You gotta be kidding.....Iowa lost to iowa state which lost to connecticut...PULEEEEEEEEZE!
B.) Coaches can not buy players "things", the school pays for the motel rooms, meals, and transportation (for school functions only).
C.) About him attending classes when he was a senior in HS: (I am not calling him stupid) If anyone thinks that "grades" are not given, then they are naive.
With his attitiude about the "homeless", I think I'll hold him to that when he signs his contract with the NFL (insert team name here) and lives on a salary of let's say $100k and gives the rest to the poor souls on the street in Columbus.
Despite the above, I'll be rooting come game day! GOOOOOOOOOOO BUCKS!
METARZAN
The big problem is that they are effectively "away" for all but a very few bowl games. At least OSU and Miami will have the same time-zone and travel issues, if not the temperature difference.
(I'll be rooting for Iowa in this one, but as a Notre Dame fan, obviously all I can say about USC is to echo your "ouch".)
PHOENIX -- We hate when life interrupts the games we're obsessed with. Our entertainment world doesn't have much room for humanity.
No wonder part of us, the heartless part that sometimes overwhelms our thoughts, wants Maurice Clarett to just shut up and run the ball. Everything is simpler when the athletes are robotic warriors.
The world, of course, is far from simple. So, too, are athletes. Just because they perform physical feats we can only dream about doesn't mean they don't struggle with the same doubts, fears and even grief that we all battle at times.
Clarett's humanity flashed for a few minutes yesterday in the form of an intelligent, impestuous, independent 19-year-old. They were the traits usually hidden by his Ohio State football uniform.
He ripped OSU -- "they jerked me'' -- for not allowing him to leave the Fiesta Bowl practices here and travel to his hometown of Youngstown to attend the funeral of his murdered friend, Juan Bell.
His criticism came wrapped in an impressive display of worldliness for a teen-ager, complete with thoughtful commentary about society's misplaced values and our inability to help the homeless and poor.
"I guess football is more important than a person's life to them, so that's why I'm just ready to get the game over and go back home,'' Clarett said.
Powerful stuff. Coming four days before OSU plays Miami in the national championship game, Clarett's comments caused a media firestorm, and, certainly, has fans in the Buckeye Nation wringing their hands over how it might affect the preparation of him and his teammates.
It's usually not good when the star player is referring to his school as "they'' and "them.''
Clarett's anger was misplaced. OSU coach Jim Tressel and athletic director Andy Geiger explained that their star tailback would have been permitted to leave the team for the funeral had he paid his own way. That financial obligation was necessary because he hadn't filled out the proper paper work before his request, and payment by others would be an NCAA infraction. Rules are rules.
Everything seemed simple to Clarett: he just wanted to go bury his friend, and someone, for some reason, was keeping him from doing so.
In essence, Clarett found himself snared in the kind of bureaucratic web weaved by the NCAA that so often entangles college athletes. He was raging against a machine he didn't comprehend.
It's tempting to dismiss the episode as just the latest in the seasonlong soap opera, The Days of Maurice. He's had enough brush fires around him to suggest a diva's persona and the need for Tressel to don a fire-retardant suit.
Clarett, after all, was smiling and at ease through most of his press conference. His mood soured over an innocuous question, as if it suddenly dawned on him that he was sitting in a sterile hotel ballroom being peppered by unfamiliar reporters at the exact moment his friend was being eulogized thousands of miles away.
Don't question the kid's grief. This is an honest person who wears his heart on his sleeve. He's not always right, but he's not afraid to express what he feels. His mother, Michelle, once proudly said she "raised him to be independent.''
Such independence, of course, flies in the face of team-oriented football, especially at a factory such as Ohio State. Buckeyes are expected to keep their quotes bland, their personal feelings inhibited by team priorities.
So Clarett will be criticized those who see nothing more important on Earth than Friday's game, especially if he doesn't perform well.
Some fans probably already want him tarred and feathered for saying yesterday that "Life is a whole lot more important than football.''
He is, of course, right. Football is simply a game, an entertainment diversion, especially for a poor neighborhood such as the one Clarett grew up in, where houses are riddled by bullet holes and there exists a powerful sense of helplessness and foreboding that we the privileged can't truly understand.
Some people don't want to hear that in the days before Ohio State has a chance to win its first national championship in 34 years.
Clarett, however, isn't going to be who everyone wants him to be, just another brick in the wall. Deal with it.
Todd Jones is sports writer for The Dispatch.
If he really was your friend you would just go back!
you don't ask for permission. no one has a gun toward your head.
Like so many liberals blame the college.
It pretty simple. I'll type slow. He....took....college....courses...while....in...high...school. Or does the trent lott comment hit a little too close to home. LOL
Maurice Clarett is not afraid of anything.
He's not fearful of Athletics Director Andy Geiger and other OSU officials, whom he accused of lying when they said he hadn’t filled out necessary paperwork to qualify for NCAA emergency funds to fly back to Youngstown for a murdered friend's funeral.
Nor does he feel threatened by the already-clamoring Buckeye nation, a rabid fan base where many are making it known they want their powerful back to run the ball and not his mouth. To that, he said, "I respect myself as a person, so I'm always going to say what I believe."
And Friday night you can bet Clarett will not be cowed by the top-ranked, unbeaten Miami Hurricanes, who are 13-point favorites against the Buckeyes in the Fiesta Bowl national championship game: "I look at them like I do every other team, they put their pants on the same way."
Already Clarett has stolen the spotlight from the star-laden Hurricanes who have been college football's headliner for two straight seasons.
In two days, the 19-year-old Buckeye has created a buzz like no other in a BCS national title game:
• He had one of his own coaches — running backs' boss Tim Spencer — grousing that he should keep his mouth shut in public when it comes to disagreements involving the football program.
• He had other people making him out to be a teenage version of Jim Brown, the hard-nosed Cleveland Brown who was just as forceful stiff-arming social injustice and personal slight as he was some overmatched defender.
• He's created a stir among giddy Buckeye fans who find their team on the cusp of what would be its first national title in 34 years. Hate messages are streaming into Internet chat rooms and media talk shows — "How can he do this now? Why is he thinking of himself instead of his team?"— but so are words of support and consolation for a young man, who in coach Jim Tressel's words, "is hurting very, very much."
• He was mobbed by the national press at Tuesday's Fiesta Bowl Media Day — at one point surrounded by more than 100 reporters and cameramen while All-American safety Mike Doss entertained two and quarterback Craig Krenzel just one. Everyone wanted to hear what Clarett would say next.
Monday, he surmised Ohio State considers "football more important than life" because he said he was given the run around rather than being allowed to attend the funeral. Afterward, Tressel said Clarett had permission to go, but that the matter wasn't in his hands. Geiger said the reason Clarett hadn't been given a ticket to return home was because he hadn't filled out the appropriate forms.
Tuesday — especially since Ohio State is ever so reluctant to let its players have a continual public forum — some thought Clarett would be offering apologies or saying his comments were misconstrued.
Just the opposite.
He didn't back down. This time he was more critical than before. He said he had filled out the paperwork and he took issue with OSU for saying otherwise: "I won't sit here and let them lie about that . . . I filled it out before I left so I could receive a Pell Grant before winter quarter."
Clarett took special issue with the school's compliance officer — Heather Lyke-Catalano — whom he said never returned his call. Tuesday, she said Geiger had told her not to talk to the media, that either he or sports information director Steve Snapp would speak for the school.
"I talked to Heather last night and she said (Maurice) has not filled out the proper paperwork," Snapp said.
According to a statement Geiger released Tuesday night, Clarett had not submitted a Free Application For Federal Student Aid Form to Ohio State as of Monday: "Maurice may have begun the process, but at the time we had to make the decision, there was no indication of a FAFFSA on file for Maurice. We were therefore compelled to follow the NCAA rules as they apply to the situation."
Since Tressel acknowledges Clarett asked to go home three days ago, you wonder why the university didn't help him through the paperwork the way it did when it originally signed him to a scholarship. That took nothing more than a pen stroke, why was this so impossible?
From the outside, it looks as if someone didn't want him to go home. Maybe there was worry he would not get back in time for the game, or that because of his uneasiness with flying, he wouldn't be the same player when he got back. Maybe there was concern for his safety at the funeral. Maybe it was thought that since he had been home on Christmas break — and his friend had been killed Dec. 21 — he'd had time to mourn.
However this played out, Ohio State isn't looking good on the national front. It's caught in a messy "he said-she said" battle with its most celebrated player and, in the process, it is taking its lumps in newspapers across the country. It is being saddled with a bit of that image — the school as football factory — it has tried so desperately to avoid. From afar, it does look like football comes before life.
In the past, players who spoke out publicly — All-American linebacker Matt Wilhelm comes to mind — seem to have been subsequently muzzled. But Tressel seems to allow Clarett added leeway, likely realizing this edginess that makes the back take a verbal stand is some of the same stuff that makes him the take-no-prisoners football player he is.
Without Clarett — who has given his team 1,190 rushing yards, 16 touchdowns and a confidence rooted in his toughness — the Buckeyes almost certainly would not be in this title game. OSU fans should remember whether the team wins or loses.
Clarett has set himself up as an easy target for any Buckeye failures. But he's speaking from the heart and right now that heart is hurting.
"I'm not going to go tell him here's how you should grieve," Tressel said. "I just want to make sure he knows that when he needs me, I'm there for him. And through it all we're going to work hard at the task at hand while empathizing with the situation at hand."
Friday night you wonder how Clarett will be. Will he be the kid who fumbled three times at Northwestern or that force who ran roughshod over one team after another? My bet is he will not wilt.
"Big players make big plays in big games," he said. "A lot of guys say that, they say they want to be special, but then they don't want the pressure that comes with it. Me, I'd like every carry, every ball thrown to me. I won't ever back down."
Ohio State learned that again Tuesday.
It hopes Miami does the same Friday night.
Contact Tom Archdeacon at 225-2156 or tom_archdeacon@coxohio.com
[From the Dayton Daily News: 01.01.2003]
TEMPE, Ariz. -- One day after Maurice Clarett sent fear throughout the Buckeye Nation by saying something other than "Miami's a fine team'' at a Fiesta Bowl interview session, the human distraction was back at work yesterday.
The national news media beat a path to the Ohio State running back's doorstep and peppered him with more questions during team interview day. As you would expect, Clarett didn't disappoint.
By again saying what's on his mind about OSU's role in keeping him from returning home for a murdered friend's funeral, Clarett gave OSU fans a convenient scapegoat for a Buckeyes loss Friday night.
So before we get into today's entertaining he-said, she-said scenario, allow me to make a couple of important statements:
Clarett may indeed be the human distraction, but he is also the team's best player and its best chance to beat No. 1 Miami. And, contrary to what a lot of worrywarts think, whatever happens Friday will have absolutely nothing to do with Clarett's two-day verbal barrage against OSU athletic department officials.
Maybe you'd rather have your star running back brood quietly about a perceived injustice, but I would rather have him get it out of his system before he takes the field in the biggest OSU football game in more than 30 years.
With that said, we defer to Clarett and the media horde:
Was your comment blown out of proportion?
"I don't think it was. I think people just take it the way they want to take it.''
Is this the wrong place to speak on an issue like this?
"You can speak about anything anytime you want to. It doesn't make it any more important that it's a national championship game or whatever.''
OSU officials say you could have gone home if only you had filed the proper paperwork. Do you want to take back your criticism?
"They didn't tell you that I filed all the paperwork already before I left. Go ask Heather Lyke (Catalano, OSU's associate athletics director for compliance services) about that. I filled out the paperwork. So they can't lie about that. I won't sit here and let them lie about that. It's on file.''
But they said . . .
"Ask them. They didn't talk to me. I talked to the coach, and he pointed me in the direction of the compliance lady (Catalano), and the compliance lady said she'd get back to me in my room. But she never called me back in my room, and she never called me back on my cellphone, so that's the real reason I was mad. She told me she was going to call me back, and she never did.
"Of course, they're going to make themselves look better than me. They make me look like I'm stupid.''
Man, I can hear the groans all the way from Ohio, and with them, the echoes of the inevitable criticism: This takes away the players' focus. It hurts concentration. It will hurt the team.
Sorry. I don't believe it, and neither do Clarett's teammates.
"One comment by one person isn't going to distract 105 people, plus coaches,'' linebacker Matt Wilhelm said.
But the sentiment many OSU fans are expressing is clear: With all the American rights that have been trampled because of security concerns since 9/11, couldn't the president have suspended our freedom of speech long enough to get the Buckeyes through Friday's game?
"As a leader, head coach and management-type person,'' OSU coach Jim Tressel said, "while we want things to be orderly and exactly as we like them, let me steal from a guy named Dozier and say life is more tragic than orderly. I guess we'd all like things to be exactly like we want them, but that's not the way it is.
"I know this: Every one of us understands that if Maurice Clarett weren't on our team, we probably wouldn't be here. Now, it's the same thing with Craig Krenzel and Chris Gamble and Tim Anderson and Kenny Peterson.''
None of whom, by the way, seemed the least bit distracted by Clarett's outburst.
A few minutes earlier, Miami's outspoken center, Brett Romberg, was talking about someday having his "own underwear line,'' how much he likes the "wildlife'' of Miami and how teammate "Chris Myers' girlfriend is the butt of every joke.''
Is he a distraction for the Hurricanes?
"Yeah, I guess I am,'' Romberg said.
I didn't hear any groans from Miami.
Bob Hunter is sports columnist for The Dispatch.
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