Anyone who argues that education is an impediment to success is wrong. Maurice Clarett is wrong, and he's not just wrong, but a dangerous precedent. Clarett is basically a job applicant with lousy credentials, and his credentials as a plaintiff are lousy too, and we can only hope as a society that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit recognizes just how lousy-wrong Clarett is when it rules on his NFL draft eligibility next week.
Here's a fact, and one you may not know: The winningest teams in the NFL last season just happened to be the ones with the most college graduates on their rosters. The NFL Players Association, interested to see whether there was a correlation between education and on-field success, conducted a survey and found that the three teams with the highest grad rates were the Carolina Panthers, the New England Patriots, and the Indianapolis Colts -- all of whom reached the conference championships, and two of whom played in the Super Bowl. The union found something else as well: players with degrees can expect to have higher earnings during their football careers.
So it's difficult, then, to see how staying in college for three years would materially injure Clarett -- or anybody who aspires to play in the league. Unfortunately, a district court judge named Shira Scheindlin decided that the NFL's age eligibility restriction is a terrible plight, and ruled Clarett could enter the draft. The NFL believes there is an excellent chance the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit will overturn that idiotic decision when it hears arguments this week, though not for any of the important reasons stated, but because of nuances in labor and antitrust law.
Root for the nuances to win -- because they will decide a whole range of issues, and affect kids who at this moment are playing with Legos.
"This is not just about Maurice Clarett," says Gene Upshaw, head of the NFLPA, which is supporting the NFL in its effort to keep Clarett out of the draft. "He just happens to be the name on the lawsuit. I've told him that. I said, 'This is nothing personal between us and you.' What is personal is we believe there should be requirements that kids stay in school certain amount of time. And we also believe there is a safety issue."
The legal issue is whether the NFL and its union have the right to negotiate and set rules of entry into the profession of football, like other businesses and unions. "You can't just decide that you're going to be a carpenter," Upshaw says. "We've got to know if you know hammers from nails." But Clarett's lawyers argue he's being prevented from applying for a job in the first place. One of Clarett's lawyers, John Langel, insists that Clarett is no different from, say, a child star in Hollywood. "For them to say someone should stay in school is paternalistic," he says. "They have no legitimate interest in saying that. Nobody does."
Or do they? There are a lot of complicated questions tied up in the Clarett case, and a lot of different sorts of people will be affected, and from a societal standpoint there is no easy answer. All I can say is, I sure hope the airlines have an age policy when they're thinking about who should be pilots.
Among those potentially affected by the Clarett case is the NBA. The NBA's current age rule, which requires a player be either a high school grad or 18 years old, would be illegal under the reasoning of Clarett. "The notion is that if you're good enough to play you should be allowed to play, no matter how old," says Commissioner David Stern. "To which I respond, there's a terrific 14-year-old in Cincinnati."
Many places of employment do not require that you have a college degree. So why can't the NBA or the NFL require the same thing in their business? The answer is that the courts historically have defined pro teams as individual competitors, rather than a single business entity, and therefore labor law becomes tricky, and not always sensible. "The policy is debatable," Stern says. "But the social issues are not -- especially in a sport so attractive to kids."
Anyone who doubts that need only look at the NBA, which more than some 30 years ago lost its legal battle to keep high schoolers out of its draft with the Spencer Haywood "hardship decision." If the infusion of teenagers has proven anything, it's that a pro league indeed has a legitimate interest in making sure its players are educated and well-adjusted citizens. Stern has watched various franchises struggle with the job of child rearing and fail; he's watched youths alienate fans and harm the league commercially, and harm themselves, too. For every LeBron James there is a Leon Smith and Taj McDavid and scores more you've never heard of because they didn't make it. That's why Stern was trying to negotiate an age restriction with his own players' union when the damaging Clarett ruling came down, and why he's intensely interested in the appeals court ruling.
Stern says, "Look. I'm not arguing the fact that LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony and Kobe Bryant and Jermaine O'Neal and a long list of able, mature young men can't play and contribute in the NBA at a young age. It's just that I really would have preferred not to be a societal magnet for millions of kids who are thinking that the answers to all of their career aspirations is the NBA, with the egos, and people surrounding them telling the NBA is their ticket, and that that's what they should be concentrating on that, when you know statistically most kids aren't ever going to make it."
Clarett's lawyers argue that the NFL's rule is a simply a restraint so the league can maintain a cozy relationship with the NCAA as a free farm system, and has nothing really to do with education. But it's too easy, and too cliched, to characterize the pro leagues as corporate villains incapable of conscience.
The true fact of the matter is that leagues probably care more about the well-being of players than some player-agents I could name. The average career span of the NFL player is 3.4 years. Yet agents urge scores of college players each year to forgo their senior year because they could be injured, so they can make commissions for sending them to the NFL -- where the chances of being hurt rise fivefold.
Does the league have a legitimate interest in ensuring players aren't unusually vulnerable to mishap or injury or some other form of ruination? You bet. And it's not just a matter of conscience, either. If a club uses a first- or second-round pick on a guy who is injured unnecessarily or who fails prematurely, it hurts everyone. Every time a new player enters the NFL and signs a contract, an NFL veteran, by definition, loses his job. Clarett's employment potentially affects all employees in the NFL, and all of the kids who are future employees, too. The players' union has negotiated a collective bargaining agreement that determines everything from the size of rosters and the amount of payrolls, and the Clarett decision will affect every single man now playing in the league, and any child who wants to.
Clarett is a confirmed screw-up, who accepted benefits in violation of NCAA rules, lied on a police report and willfully tossed away his collegiate career. In a way, "He's the best plaintiff we could ask for," said one source associated with the NFL. "Here's a guy who, through his own devices, has ensured he can't go home anymore. I just think the league has a legitimate interest in making sure its employees are emotionally and behaviorally mature, as well as physically."
The irony is that none of this may count with the appeals court. The second circuit judges panel will probably concentrate instead on the obscure and highly technical legal nuance of whether Clarett is a job applicant and whether his situation falls inside or outside of the collective bargaining agreement.
Does it matter that the NFL's age rule is not just a matter of legal nuance, but serves a variety of laudable social objectives? It might not.
But it should.