Clarett attorney: NFL rule is shaky

Others say the rule won't fall so easily.
By RICK BONNELL
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett won't play Saturday against N.C. State, and probably won't ever be reinstated by the Buckeyes because he's under university and NCAA investigation for possibly taking improper benefits.
Columbus police also charged him Tuesday with lying about items stolen from his car.
In any other major sport, a prodigy of Clarett's talent -- he rushed for 1,237 yards as a freshman last season and scored 18 touchdowns -- would likely already be a pro.
But in football, you must wait three seasons after your high school graduation to enter the NFL's talent pool.
At least, that's how it works now.
"For whoever challenges the rule, I don't think it's going to take a long time" to get it overturned, Clarett's attorney, Alan Milstein, told USA Today. "When the rule gets challenged, the rule will fall and it will fall quickly."
Disagreement
Others say it wouldn't be so quick and easy to force the NFL to let Clarett play there next season.
The issue: Is football so much more demanding than other sports that players aren't ready for the NFL until at least the end of their third year of college?
Carolina Panthers general manager Marty Hurney said he's confident the NFL is justified in its reasoning.
"I think this game is played at such a high speed that you have to be physically mature to play it," he said. "I don't think any other game combines the need for physical maturity with the mental element to play at the top level.
"They're all grown men out there."
Yet there are plenty of grown men in the NBA, where it's become the norm lately for top stars -- including Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett and Tracy McGrady -- to jump straight from the preps to the pros.
Or look at tennis, where Andy Roddick, 21, just won the U.S. Open.
Major League Baseball routinely drafts players out of high school, as does the NHL. The PGA and LPGA tours allow players as young as 17 to qualify.
Different demands
"Those sports are totally different," Hurney said. "Football demands you play as a team, and those sports lend themselves more to individual talent. The union is not fighting us on this, and I think that shows that anybody close to the situation agrees it's not a good idea."
It's true that the NFL Players Association isn't pushing to change the rule. In fact, the NFLPA's Web site includes an article discouraging college juniors from turning pro unless they're confident of being chosen in the first round.
The NBA was forced to let in underclassmen when Spencer Haywood won an antitrust suit in the early 1970s. Haywood has said he's surprised an underclassmen hasn't already sued the NFL on similar grounds.
Mark Conrad, a sports-law professor at Fordham, predicts Clarett would likely win if he's prepared for the time and cost of such a lawsuit. But Conrad cautions the Haywood case doesn't guarantee a win against the NFL.
"It's apples and oranges," he said. "In the NBA, you have extremely talented kids of 18 or 19 who can be impact players because that's more a sport of individual skills.
"In the NFL, veterans don't take kindly to kids taking their jobs, and that's a sport of collisions."
Tie-up possibility
Conrad said the NFL could probably tie up such a case in court until the spring of 2005, when Clarett could turn pro under the current rule.
"They're long and expensive cases to try," he said. "Preparation for these kinds of cases is very expensive because they require a lot of experts to show the competitive and anti-competitive effects" of the NFL's rule.
And what about an injunction, forcing the NFL to let Clarett play while a case is decided?
"That's very tough" to imagine, Conrad said, "because you'd basically be deciding the case" by granting the injunction.