August 9, 2006 Page 1 of 2 Clarett arrested? Oh the humanity! Troubled athlete joins Rose, Tyson as spectacular flameout COMMENTARY By Mike Celizic MSNBC contributor Updated: 8:23 p.m. PT Aug 9, 2006 Falls from grace, as with most things in life, come in a wide variety of forms. There are the little slipups — like Don Mattingly getting nailed for urinating in an alley — that are immediately forgiven and quickly forgotten. There are the basic knuckleheaded stunts that are embarrassing but can be weathered with time — like Paul Hornung’s suspension for gambling. And then there are the flaming Hindenburg-like crashes from on high that are so spectacular they leave us gaping in awe, dumbstruck at the destruction. Oh, the humanity. It’s not easy to make that last category. It is, in fact, just as difficult in its own way as it is to climb to the summit of the opposite end of the spectrum, where only those who are darned-near perfect hang their laundry. But Maurice Clarett has managed it. A little more than four years ago, Clarett was the best thing to happen to Ohio since free rights on red. The star freshman running back for the Ohio State Buckeyes scored the winning touchdown in the second overtime to beat Miami and bring the national championship back to Columbus. A year later, he was a mild slipup, charged with lying to police. A bit later, he was edging into basic knucklehead mode, showing up out of shape for the scouting combine and neglecting to exert any effort in Broncos camp. Within another year, he was charged with robbing someone of a cellphone — at gunpoint. He was teetering on the edge. Early Wednesday morning, he came down in flames in an episode made for a wildest police chase video. We’ll leave to the police the questions of where he was going after 2 a.m. dressed in body armor and driving an SUV with a stock of loaded guns and a half-bottle of vodka. I’m guessing it wasn’t to pick up groceries. The fall took a while to develop, but it vaults Clarett into the top rank of fallen athletes, earning him a seat in the same row with Lawrence Phillips, the former star running back at Nebraska who started his slide by beating up women and most recently had elevated his game to stealing a car and trying to run down a flock of teenagers. A couple rows lower down is Art Schliester, the former Ohio State star quarterback who was eaten whole by a gambling addiction. Near him is Todd Marinuanovich, the USC quarterback who would rather get stoned than play football. He’s keeping a seat warm for Ricky Williams, who may or may not yet turn things around before he hits the rocks. At the top of this heap of losers reigns Pete Rose, the all-time hits king of baseball who spent time in jail for tax evasion and is spending the rest of his life and then eternity banned from baseball because he gambled on games. At his right hand is Mike Tyson, who was having a great career right up until he was sent to the slammer for sexually assaulting a beauty pageant contestant. On his discharge, he worked some Hannibal Lector into his act, spent every nickel Don King let him keep of the hundreds of millions of dollars he made, and pretty much dropped off the face of the earth. August 9, 2006 Page 2 of 2 We tend to remember the flaming crashes in life, which probably has something to do with the success of NASCAR. Since they stand out so starkly, we tend to look at a guy like Clarett and think of all the other ne’er-do-wells we’ve seen, concluding that the world is going to perdition in a fanny pack. Reading the gory details of the arrest makes the brain flash up images of Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden, of Roy Tarpley and Shawn Kemp. (Right before I wrote that sentence, I had a mental block on Kemp’s name, so I Googled “center nba marijuana fat.” Kemp was the first reference that came up. Are search engines cool, or what?) That made me think of drugs and Mark McGwire, another guy who’s moved near the top of the list, and Floyd Landis and Tim Montgomery and Rafael Palmiero. Thinking of Rose brought up Hornung and Denny McLain, who went from 31 games won in one season to the slammer, another gambling casualty. Thinking of which of them deserved to be named the king of the losers brought Tyson to mind. If I spent another hour or so thinking about it, I’d be thinking of singers choking on their own vomit and comics dying of overdoses and writers falling into the bottle and priests molesting the altar boys until I’d be ready to slash my wrists, convinced that the human race is beyond redemption. But we have to realize that guys like Clarett are as rare as guys like Tiger Woods and Walter Payton and Tiki Barber and Michael Jordan and Mattingly who do just about everything right. It makes sense. Great talent, after all, doesn’t help you if you don’t have at least a halfway decent head to go along with it. And since it’s all a genetic craps shoot, most of us are going to end up somewhere in the middle, and a few are going to end up at the extremes. It’s only when someone is at the extreme high end in both talent and character that he or she becomes a shining beacon of everything that’s right. Both ends of the spectrum are probably about even. For every knucklehead, there’s a sterling person, just as for every klutz who can’t walk and chew gum there’s a physical genius. So go ahead and have fun cursing Clarett and all the bad apples if that’s what winds your clock. But you’d better spend your time realizing how special it is to have a Jason Varitek or Derek Jeter or David Ortiz to both wonder at and admire. They’re different ends of the spectrum, both necessary for life and our appreciation of what we have. If we don’t get spectacular crashes, we can’t appreciate spectacular success. Mike Celizic writes regularly for MSNBC.com and is a freelance writer based in New York. URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14269575/ © 2006 MSNBC.com .