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Ex-agent rooting for Clarett
By ryan Buck
ESPN’s “Youngstown Boys” premiered to an invited audience Thursday night at the Gateway Film Center across from The Ohio State University campus. “Undefeated on the field ... under fire off it,” the tagline reads.
Like its two main characters, Maurice Clarett and Jim Tressel, the production is already facing heat. The Toledo Blade reported Friday that ESPN is correcting scenes of the film in which the network felt directors Jeff and Michael Zimbalist exercised “creative liberties.”
In addition to fitting footage from a 2011 Tressel press conference into a scene chronicling Clarett’s 2003 dismissal from Ohio State football, the most glaring example was tape suggesting Clarett scored the game-winning touchdown in OSU’s 2002 win over Michigan.
Over 2,000 miles away near Los Angeles, Josh Luchs sat patiently awaiting his latest turn in an ESPN production. One of Clarett’s former agents, Luchs, who makes an appearance in the film, knows firsthand the drama that followed Clarett. Almost immediately, Luchs and partner Steve Feldman understood the challenge when they met him, along with a colorful entourage, in 2004.
“It was third parties and non-football people that were acting in the role of benefactors,” Luchs said by phone. “Everybody had an opinion. It was hard to get him to focus on training and preparation that is required to compete at highest level in the National Football League. When the eyes are firmly focused in the stars, it’s hard to keep someone at that age grounded.”
Luchs and Feldman first met Clarett at the home of California businessman Hai Waknine, who also appears in “Youngstown Boys,” where they encountered most vices known to man. In Luchs’ book “Illegal Procedure,” he says Clarett’s benefactor was alleged to have been involved in Israeli organized crime.
One of the first tasks Luchs and Feldman undertook was organizing an ill-fated oceanside workout for Clarett in the Pacific sand. He was to become the only player to participate in two draft combines after an unsuccessful attempt to sue the NFL a year earlier.
“We were walking down Wilshire Boulevard,” Luchs said. “I told Steve, ‘I bet a dollar this guy never plays a down in the NFL.’ I bet him and that was one dollar that I wish I never would’ve gotten. I wish he had not been so self-destructive as to waste second and third chances.”
The Broncos rewarded Luchs’ efforts to repair Clarett’s image and atonement for a legendarily bad combine and amazed the football world with a leap of faith.
“Maurice Clarett, on talent alone, was the first pick in that draft and many thererafter,” Luchs said. “Judging him on that, I wasn’t surprsed he went in the third round.”
Luchs left the profession in 2010 after admitting to Sports Illustrated that he had paid college players to sign with him and continues to passionately argue against the “hypocrisy” of big-time college athletics.
“Maurice has either sincerely seen the light from a few conversations I’ve had with him in the last year or two or he’s an Academy Award-winning actor because he’s contrite and taking responsibility for things in his past,” Luchs said. “He’s taking a role in his child’s life and being the best dad he can be and trying to make good and you’ve got to root for that.”