Maurice Clarett's Advice for LSU Superstar Leonard Fournette
Should Leonard Fournette be able to enter the 2016 NFL draft?
In many ways, this conversation was preordained. With each breathtaking run, each defensive back run over, each effortless 200-yard game and each trip to the end zone, one can’t help but wonder how the NFL could possibly tell this young man he’s not allowed access next spring.
The columns have been written. They will continue to be crafted. Despite Fournette’s best efforts to extinguish a fire he did not create, the questions surrounding his future will persist. He’s a wonderful, transcendent talent, and we are dying to know what his next act will be.
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If Fournette continues his torrid pace, we will keep comparing him to the legends of the game. To Herschel and Bo and the like. And yet, neither Walker nor Jackson could provide the appropriate perspective on his NFL predicament, if such a decision exists. There is only one running back—the sport’s greatest mystery, tragedy and now redemption tale—capable of understanding. So I called Maurice Clarett to find out.
“I suggest he ignores it,” Clarett told Bleacher Report of Fournette and the NFL. “All the other stuff is just noise. Complete this season out and don’t put your energy into next season just yet. When it comes, you deal with it. Come back next year, put together a strong campaign and move forward.”
This was not the first time Clarett has talked about Fournette.
During the final days of June, Clarett visited Baton Rouge to deliver a message to the LSU football team as he has done at places like Alabama, Ohio State, Florida State, TCU and, most recently, the Boston Celtics.
Clarett, as he has done plenty over the past five years, stressed the importance of education—not just “majoring in eligibility”—but taking advantage of all the resources available in college. He spoke to the team about decision-making and also an inevitable life after football. The blueprint he laid before them was essentially the antithesis of the path he followed 13 years ago.
When Clarett finished and readied to leave as the room cleared out, there was still one player left hoping to speak one-on-one. Fournette introduced himself to the former Ohio State running back.
“I didn’t recognize him without the helmet on,” Clarett said. “I always just knew him as No. 7, the young kid who had a really good freshman year.”
The two spoke of Fournette’s upbringing in New Orleans. They talked football and life, pinballing stories off one another about their experiences. When asked, Clarett gladly offered up advice to the young man who was suddenly much more than just a number on the back of a jersey. He explained what he endured during his successful, volatile and short football voyage.
“I wanted to help provide a level of clarity,” Clarett said.
The two went their separate ways shortly after the satisfying conversation. Clarett went to his next campus to offer guidance. Fournette prepared for the season ahead—a season that no one, not even the great running back himself, could see coming.
Since that conversation, Fournette has become a phenomenon. He has run for 864 awe-inspiring yards in just four games. He has eclipsed the 200-yard mark three times. He has scored 11 touchdowns, averaging nearly a first down every time he carries the ball. He has become the face of college football four games into his sophomore year.
“I’ve watched what everyone else has,” Clarett said. “I don’t think his running style has really been on display in the past decade. The yards after contact really make him impressive compared to everyone else out there.”
As easy as Fournette has made the sport look at times, the story is no longer just about a potential Heisman running back leading an undefeated team in the nation’s premier conference. It’s escalated well beyond without an ounce of warning.
Many are now openly assessing whether the sophomore wrecking ball should challenge the NFL’s three-year eligibility rule for the draft—a battle Clarett is intimately familiar with—and use his freakish talents and profile to take on his most daunting opponent yet.
“It sounds good, it sounds fun, and I wish it were different,” Clarett said. “I probably wouldn’t be where I am at right now. But when you’re talking about this, you’re talking about big business.”
Clarett challenged the NFL’s ruling and won in 2004. He then lost the appeal, which sent him into football purgatory. He eventually made it to the NFL after a long wait between carries, only to end up in the Toledo Correctional Institution not long after.
His rise and fall and rise are well documented. Clarett’s story and unimaginable climb to this place—a place of tranquility, triumph and now leadership—is a 10,000-word column in itself. But that's for another time.
The difference between these two players exists in the context. Clarett’s battle with one of the world’s most powerful corporations came after he was dismissed by Ohio State. In many ways, it came out of a sheer lack of options.
“I never wanted to leave,” Clarett said. “It was either go to Division I-AA or go to the NFL. What was created forced me out of the university. When I was in that position, there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in my mind that I could play in the league. And even when I got there, I was saying to myself that I could have done it years ago when I was in a lot better shape, a lot more focused and a lot more in tune with the game.”
The idea that many are proposing to Fournette—who, again, has shown no interest in a fight—is that he finish out the year, maybe win a Heisman if things fall into place and then never log another carry at the collegiate level.
Former South Carolina defensive end Jadeveon Clowney garnered a similar treatment just a few short years ago before his junior season began. After a brilliant sophomore season—one that culminated in a hit that rattled the earth’s core in his team’s bowl game—Clowney played as long as he was required.
Despite not coming close to the insane expectations bestowed upon him, Clowney avoided catastrophic injury his junior year and was drafted No. 1 overall months later by the Houston Texans.
Fournette seems to be building toward a similar place. The concept, for those in favor of him saying farewell ahead of schedule, is quite simple: Fournette has shown all he has to and has already stated his case to each and every NFL general manager. The risk of playing another year for free, no matter the insurance policy available, just wouldn’t be worth it.
Having waited on football, Clarett can attest to some of the challenges in this proposed theory. For starters, the very practical problem with not playing a real game for over a year.
“When you have a craft, you have to constantly, constantly refine it,” Clarett said. “Even if he didn’t play any games, he still has to practice and further develop his skill level. It lacks motivation and interest. Go through the live movements and the live contact—that’s the only way you get better. That’s the only way you improve. What beats you up is not knowing.”
And yet, there is another way. Fournette and all of his budding fame could take the NFL on this spring if he so desired. He could pair up with a dynamite legal team itching for an opportunity to take on the weakening shield in a high-profile case.
Forget about facing Alabama one last time. Fournette could challenge the opponent of all opponents—the NFL. Clarett tried, succeeded and eventually failed doing so more than a decade ago. The process eventually took its toll.
“I didn’t understand this when I did it, but he doesn’t have the resources to change the rules,” Clarett said. “The process will beat you up so much from the battering on TV, the fans and just the entire thing. It will drain you, and it will drain your interest in football. That’s what it did to me.”
And there’s yet another option. There's another familiar door to walk right through—the door Fournette has indicated early on that he intends to open.
The best player in college football could finish out this season, enjoying whatever treasures and awards might come his way. He could become even bigger, faster, stronger and more mentally equipped to handle the spotlight ahead. He could play football in his home state, entertaining the people who followed him long before he became a national star.
He could come back next season even better than he is right now—a possibility as real as it is frightening—and stay clear of the madness others are preemptively tossing in his lap. He could avoid the path that others have failed to travel before him, others including Clarett, choosing to play the sport he so deeply cares about at a university he is so deeply invested in.
“You had a great year,” Clarett said. “And even though you wish things were different, they’re not. My advice to him is to continue to play.”
Unless noted otherwise, all quotes obtained firsthand.
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