Closing Another Chapter

Terrelle Pryor was always supposed to leave Ohio State after his junior year. It’s just that it was assumed it would be through the front door and not some back alley during finals week of his spring quarter.

Whether Pryor left of his own volition or was pushed probably doesn’t matter much. He’s gone and off to wherever his mercurial life takes him next. He’ll probably latch on to a NFL team at one position or another at some point. He may have to take some detours first, like the CFL. Maybe he just fades away. For Pryor, his next career will only take him as far as he’s willing to let it.

If past is prologue, that thought doesn’t bode well for Pryor. On the other hand with kids past rarely is prologue. So there is hope.

There are new allegations of course about Pryor that came out the same day he left Ohio State for good. The latest set is from someone who labeled himself as a one-time close friend who got tired of Pryor’s arrogant attitude. This anonymous source claimed he witnessed Pryor being paid between $20,000 and $40,000 in exchange for signing various pieces of memorabilia.

It’s a pretty damning accusation if true but the principles involved, including the person who is alleged to have made the payments, claim it never happened. There have been no cancelled checks produced and no proof other than a disgruntled ex-friend. On that score, it’s always instructive that those making the accusations try to bolster their credibility by claiming a close relationship with the alleged perpetrator but then are too afraid to identify themselves publicly.

At this point, not much of this really matters much anymore anyway. Pryor didn’t so much leave the Buckeyes as he did the jurisdiction of the NCAA. No longer bound by their rules and under no compulsion to subject himself to any more investigations or interrogations from them, Pryor’s exit is more about relieving himself of the headaches that come with acting like a professional in a land of sham amateurism.

Pryor will be vilified for years because he’s an easy target. He comes across as arrogant and entitled but let’s remember, since we’re the adults in the room, that usually these are just the outward manifestations of the real affliction—raging immaturity.

His charge going forward will be to learn and grow. It won’t be a straight line because it never is. For Pryor’s sake, though, hopefully he can learn from the adversity that he inflicted upon himself in the same way that Maurice Clarett, Pryor’s like-minded bookend to the Tressel’s years, finally learned from his.

In a story from Rusty Miller for the Associated Press, Clarett gave an interview on The Dan Patrick Show and offered a surprising, refreshing and yes, mature, perspective on what’s taking place at his former school.

In no uncertain terms Clarett blamed the players, just as he blamed himself, for the trouble that followed their actions. Clarett dispensed with the notion that Ohio State has been infiltrated with a cadre of boosters preying on unsuspecting players. Instead it is the players themselves that go looking for trouble, looking for ways to capitalize on their local fame, and doing it under the radar. As Clarett said, boosters didn’t reach out to him, he reached out to them.

Maybe that’s little solace to Buckeye fans at the moment, but it does illustrate that even if it does seem like the Buckeyes are trapped in a do-loop of accusations and investigations, the world indeed does keep on spinning.

For now though, those caught in this ring of Hell, including most Ohio State administrators and the Board of Trustees, are just as happy just to close the book on Pryor as he likely is on them. As it is, Pryor will now essentially be remembered for nothing on the field (though his contributions there were considerable) and always for being the catalyst for the program’s more destructive instincts.

Whether that assessment is fair likewise doesn’t really matter anymore anyway. What matters most is public perception and once Gene Smith and Gordon Gee, at the urging of the most senior members of the Board of Trustees, determined that Pryor, like Jim Tressel, became the stain that couldn’t be cleaned, he had to go, graciously or otherwise. If Tressel was getting lukewarm support from Smith even as he was being dangled as the entrée for the NCAA’s investigative appetite, Smith’s silence toward Pryor was deafening.

In most ways, what’s happened to the Ohio State Buckeyes football program since the end of last season is unfathomable. I doubt anyone thought that the Buckeyes program was pristine in the same way that no one thinks that any major football program is pristine. But I doubt that anyone thought the Buckeyes program was built like a Bluth Family housing development, impressive from the outside but lacking virtually any substance behind the façade.

And yet here we are, just 6 months from the end of last season and the Buckeyes program looks more worn and tattered than a fading 2002 National Championship banner hanging from a flag pole in the neighbor’s yard. It seems like a week hasn’t gone by since the run up to last year’s Sugar Bowl when another negative story about this player or that coach hasn’t come out.

There’s a certain fishbowl quality to any major program, but the Buckeyes aren’t just swimming in a fish bowl. At the moment it seems like they are the only fish in a very large aquarium and all anyone can do is fixate on them at the moment. That glare will end at some point. Sooner or later another school will step into it and become the next target of the collective wrath.

But until that happens, it’s going to be body blow after body blow and like the captive Louis Zamperini, the hero of Laura Hildebrand’s excellent book “Unbroken” had to do in front of his Japanese captors, Buckeyes fans will just have to take the punches and the kicks and the constant degradation without flinching lest even more then be inflicted.

Even as this latest chapter in the Summer of Hell for the Buckeyes unfolds, I suspect that eventually those fans that bother to stop and consider Pryor in a broader context will begin to understand and empathize, if just a bit, recognizing that in many ways he, like every other Cam Newton of the world, is the byproduct of the intense greed that rests at the center of big time college football.
For whatever else this sordid tale tells us, it screams for major reforms. Until that happens, until those issues are finally and forcefully addressed, those laughing at Pryor and the Buckeyes at the moment would be wise to keep in mind that the next Terrelle Pryor may very well be working his way through your favorite college program right now.

Lingering Items: Law & Order Edition

It’s too bad that Phil Savage is no longer the general manager of the Cleveland Browns. It makes it impossible to fire him again, this time for what’s now the aftermath of one of the worst deals in the history of the franchise, signing Donte Stallworth as a free agent.

The Browns find themselves bleeding money at the moment. A poor economy that has lowered the Browns’ season ticket base and left numerous loges unsold for the 2010 has put them on less than solid footing. They’ve laid off several workers as a result. The Stallworth signing didn’t help, but that’s a wound that’s purely self-inflicted.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell did them a favor on Thursday and put a pretty hefty bandage on that wound by suspending Stallworth indefinitely and sending him a message that the ultimate penalty will be severed. But that doesn’t address the larger issues. That takes the Browns off the hook for his salary for awhile, although it does nothing to help the Browns recoup the $4.5 million roster bonus they gave him just hours before he killed Mario Reyes.

It had to be gratifying to owner Randy Lerner to learn that as part of the deal allowing Stallworth to plead guilty to DUI Manslaughter and escape with only 30 days in jail was the paying off the estate of the victim, undoubtedly with some of the millions Lerner paid him as compensation to catch a football.

If Lerner wants to regain some of the fans he’s lost through his rather indifferent approach to managing his assets, he can make a statement by immediately cutting Stallworth, financial consequences be damned. But if he fiddles, if he lets a transient salary cap issue trump doing the right thing, the Lerner, too, is effectively putting a rather dismal price on the consequences wrought by one of his employees.

Stallworth was never a fit in Cleveland and still isn’t. He’s a borderline prima donna with a serious substance abuse problem that’s now sporting the additional baggage of the guilt of actually having killed a man. From just a purely football perspective, he’s somewhere between Paul Hubbard and Braylon Edwards, and by Edwards I mean the bad Edwards, anyway. In trading card terms, he’s a common not a star. He didn’t deserve the contract Savage gave him initially and has systematically proven that point since almost day 1 of his stay in Cleveland. He won’t be missed.

The Browns have let it float out that cutting Stallworth now forces them to take a $7.6 million salary cap hit. So? How is that relevant? It will make absolutely no difference on their ability to field still another mediocre team.

And what of that issue? Although it’s difficult to find definitive figures, the Browns were several million under the league’s 2009 salary cap heading into the season. A cap hit of $7.6 million doesn’t help, but it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it’s being portrayed. Once the draft picks are signed, and there’s still plenty of money to do that even with the salary cap hit, the roster will basically be set. This isn’t a matter of money but one of conscience. Either the Browns make a statement about the kinds of people they employ or they don’t. It’s really that simple.

There’s no doubt in my mind that if Savage was still with the team, he’d be counseling patience and against overreaction, more so to protect his awful decision to sign Stallworth than to avoid cutting a player who is expected to contribute at a high level. But this is a new day and a new regime working to establish that it has actual boundaries and principles. Nothing would send a stronger signal that a player like Stallworth is everything that the new Browns are against than cutting him now.

Given Goodell’s actions, I have no doubt that the Browns will just sit back and wait. After all, Stallworth is suspended and not drawing a salary. What we don’t know, nor should it matter, is what Goodell ultimately will do. Let Stallworth be someone else’s problem, not Cleveland’s.

What surprises me most about the Stallworth case is the relatively muted outrage from the public. Sure, some in the media, like me, have gotten our panties in a twist over this. And sure, there is a little “there but for the grace of God go I” element to his situation in that a good many of us have likewise driven under the influence, so perhaps that explains it somewhat. There’s also a public so jaded by athlete misconduct that the only surprise anymore is when the sports pages doesn’t contain a story about another athlete committing a crime.

But even then, doesn’t the public feel anything for Mario Reyes? The randomness of his death at the hands of Stallworth is jarring. He just comes off the night shift, probably thinking about coming home to kiss his wife and kids before heading for some well deserved sleep in order to return the next night to a job that probably paid him less a year than the $43,000+ Stallworth earns per game. But he doesn’t make it home because some privileged drunken jerk in a Bentley celebrating nothing more than being an overpaid jerk is still buzzing from an all-night drinking binge. Too many of us can relate to drinking and driving, but apparently not enough of us have been victimized by the random acts of bad people to want to put a stake in the ground over the light treatment Stallworth got. That’s a pity.

The real truth in all of this is that today’s athletes engage in so much misconduct because they have too much free time, too much money and too little character. That isn’t to paint every professional athlete with a broad brush. The good, hopefully, outnumber the bad. But that doesn’t mean we just shrug our shoulders at the bad and get on with our insular little lives. We either send a message to our teams that having players like Stallworth on the roster is going to hit them where it hurts most, on the balance sheet, or we get what we deserve—a roster full of reprobates more notable for the crap they do off the field than the good they do on it.

It’s time for the Browns to decide on which side of the fence they sit.

**

Whatever else one thinks about Stallworth, there’s no question that he has a top-notch lawyer. The deal that was struck was so favorable and so disparate to the crime committed that no matter what Stallworth paid him, it probably wasn’t enough.

I can’t help but think that former Cleveland Indians’ outfielder, Mel Hall, wishes he had hired the same guy.

Hall was convicted recently of raping a 12-year-old girl he coached on an elite basketball team. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison which, if served to its limit, would make Hall 98 years old when released. In other words, it’s more or less a life sentence. Apparently the argument his lawyer advanced, that “Hall was a good man who mentored a lot of athletes and had a lot of good still to do” didn’t quite resonate with the jury. Good.

Hall is still professing his innocence in the whole matter but he just couldn’t overcome the parade of witnesses that said otherwise. Given the despicable nature of his acts, justice was clearly served.

One can only speculate about what Bud Selig would do with all this if Hall was still in the major leagues. Sure, the whole prison thing would crimp Hall’s availability, but considering how Selig has not dealt with steroids abusers, the chances are that Selig would probably petition the court on Hall’s behalf for work privileges.

**

Speaking of steroids abusers, it was hardly a shock to hear that Sammy Sosa was one of those players who tested positive in 2003. Little by little, the names are finally coming out.

Although Sosa sort of told Congress in 2005 that he never used illegal performance-enhancing drugs, the positive test says otherwise. But then again Sosa acted as if he couldn’t speak English during those Congressional hearings, so maybe he just misunderstood the question.

Certainly Sosa has gotten a better grasp of the language these days. He seems unfazed by the whole matter and told the media he’d just calmly wait for the Hall of Fame to call because, hey, he’s got the numbers, doesn’t he? Sammy, if the phone isn’t ringing, it’s them.

**

The news about Sosa comes on the heels of another moment of levity in the legal world offered up again by Jose Canseco. When you Google Wickipedia and look for “doofus” it takes you to Canseco’s entry.

Canseco feels that he and others, like Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro, have been blackballed by major league baseball and thus is considering suing them and the players’ union for, among other things, lost wages and defamation of character. Canseco feels like he’s been deprived of various opportunities in baseball, such as a managerial or coaching job or just a “proper reference.” Believing he and the others will be deprived of the Hall of Fame, he posits that he’ll lose out on the ancillary income that comes with being able to advertise yourself as a Hall of Famer.

Here’s a note to Canseco. Even if he had never admitted to steroids use he would have had no shot at the Hall of Fame. He was far from a complete player. His 462 home runs would be impressive but not Hall-worthy. He was a liability in the outfield. He has fewer credentials than George Foster. When you throw in the steroids use, whatever accomplishments he had at the plate are essentially nullified.

An untainted Palmeiro or Sosa might have a chance at the Hall of Fame and might still anyway. A lawsuit on their behalf is, at best, premature.

But the larger problem with the potential lawsuit is the pure folly of it all. It’s honorable, in a perverse way, that he’s been candid about his illegal drug use. But that kind of honor only places one a notch about people like Pameiro, Sosa, Roger Clemens, and Barry Bonds who remain in denial. It doesn’t qualify him for accolades, let alone a job working around ballplayers at any level. What is the job reference he craves? “Jose Canseco was a long-time abuser of illegal drugs. It helped him play the game at a level his talent would not have otherwise allowed. But he told the truth.” He can have that reference now and I won’t even charge him.

Canseco, like so many others, lives in world where everyone’s a victim just waiting for his day in court. He can’t even begin to comprehend the unclean hands he brings to any conversation about his future. Ask yourself this: would you want him working for you?

Still, I’m kind of hoping he does go through with the lawsuit. While he has no chance of winning, if he does manage to avoid having it summarily dismissed it would be great to have him take the depositions of Selig and the other owners who have knowingly tolerated the degradation of their game. Watching them all squirm might not be real justice, but it might be the best we have.

**
And what would a week of law and order be without Maurice Clarett resurfacing.

Apparently Clarett wants an early release so that he can resume his “career,” potentially in the NFL. You can’t resume what you never had. But what struck me most about the story is that Clarett’s lawyer claims that Clarett supposedly has been contacted by NFL teams while in jail.

Really? Prove it. Not surprisingly, the lawyer refused to name which ones, probably because it never happened. My recollection is that when Clarett was cut by the Denver Broncos no one came rushing up to sign him then, and that was before he ever went to jail. Why would any team be interested in him now? They aren’t.

If Clarett does get out of jail, he may get a try out somewhere. But it won’t amount to anything. As Woody Hayes might have said to him if he were still alive, “Maurice, it’s time to get on with your life’s work.” For now and hopefully a good while longer, that life’s work is making license plates.

**

Given how legal news tends to now dominate the sports pages, this week’s question to ponder is: How long before NBC gives a thumbs up to “Law & Order: Sports Page Edition?”