Redemption and rugby: This (could be) the Maurice Clarett story

By Adam Cancryn

Former All-American-turned-NFL washout Maurice Clarett is the unlikely ambassador who could vault U.S. rugby sevens into the national spotlight.

Maurice Clarett is training for a comeback.

Yes, that's a story we've heard many times before. There was 2004, when the Broncos took a third-round flyer on the Ohio State running back, even though he hadn't played in a year.

Then came 2005, when those same Broncos released him and Clarett went looking for a new team. He never got the chance; an armed robbery conviction landed him in jail for four years.

Finally free in 2010, Clarett caught on with the United Football League's Omaha Nighthawks. It was comeback time again for the one-time Parade All-American. Yet within 12 months, Clarett was back on the street.

Three strikes, the saying goes, and you're out. So you'd be forgiven for wanting to skip to the seemingly inevitable end of this latest attempt, where an unemployed Clarett fades back into anonymity. And we might indeed get there. But there's a reason that this time might be different, a reason that might be worth just the slightest shred of optimism.

The reason is that Clarett is not training for a return to football. No, the now 29-year-old who rushed for 1,237 yards as a college freshman and scored the national championship-winning touchdown has instead set his sights on rugby. The U.S. men's rugby sevens team, to be exact.

In most cases, that'd be the punchline to a sad career. The washed-up athlete, grasping for the last remaining bits of glory by slumming it in any sport that'll take him. Not with Clarett, though. Not when his comeback could hold the key to the future of U.S. rugby. Not when success here might mean a second chance for all the other athletes who were just a bit too small, or too injured, or too immature their first time around.

If you haven't heard of rugby sevens, you will soon. It's the newest Olympic sport, a stripped-down version of traditional 15-man rugby union that eliminates the brutal scrums and no-necked enforcers most commonly associated with the sport. In their place are the equivalent of seven running backs per side who scramble up and down a spacious field in what, to the uninitiated, can look like a well-coordinated mix of football, soccer and Calvinball.

It's a game that emphasizes speed, power and broken-field running, so it's no mystery that Clarett would want to give it a shot. The U.S. is stocking up for Rio in 2016, and what it lacks in homegrown rugby talent it's looking to poach from the nation's football fields. Already the team boasts ex-Dolphins safety Miles Craigwell and ultra-fast former D-II track and football star Carlin Isles, the latter of whom's highlight reels have introduced many an American to rugby sevens in the space of the one year he's played the sport.



But it is Clarett who could serve as the inflection point. He is the high-profile figure the football-to-rugby migration needs, the one who's second act could be as not just a rugby star but an ambassador for the game. His success could convince others toiling in professional football's lower leagues, or staring down the ends of their college careers, to pick up the odd-shaped ball and give it a go.

There would certainly be no shortage of candidates. For all the players drafted into the NFL each year, there are multiple times that many who were too small (like the 5'8," 160-pound Isles), or buried in the depth chart (like Craigwell) or just not ready for the spotlight, like Clarett. Bringing just a fraction of those over to rugby sevens would flood the U.S.'s pipeline. Americans always boast that the U.S. could win gold in any Olympic sport if it put even half the resources into it that it does football or basketball. Rugby sevens represents the chance to prove that, and it starts with Clarett.

Which is why this time, the comeback story might be different. There's still a long way to go; rugby sevens requires the constant running that football players aren't conditioned for. And Clarett will never be his otherworldly 20-year-old self again. But his training thus far has drawn raves.

"He's ridiculous. That's all I can say," Tiger Rugby Olympic Development Program Director Paul Holmes told Rugby Magazine last week. "His footwork is phenomenal. He's nowhere near conditioned for rugby, but that will come. ... The stuff he's doing in the gym right now, he's just ridiculous."

This is Clarett's fourth chance, a rare shot at rewriting an ending that by now we all know by heart. The hope is that he realizes that, and that he realizes his fortunes are now tied to the fortunes of all those just like him. The hope is that he shows up to training each day, pushed by his football failures and pulled forward by the allure of what could await him and U.S. rugby sevens.

Adam Cancryn is an editor and co-founder of Began in '96.