FanHouse MauriceClarett

Here's to hoping LaMont Jordan makes the Denver Broncos roster. New head coach Josh McDaniels brought in just about every available free agent running back this offseason to compete for a handful of spots.

And in light of the recent news that the Mirage hotel and casino in Las Vegas has sued Jordan over allegations that he owes them $20,000 in gambling debts, well, he could probably use the steady paycheck.

Via the Las Vegas Sun:

In his seven-year NFL career, Travis Henry rushed for more than 1,350 yards three times. After stints in Buffalo and Tennessee, his last carry came with the Broncos in 2007.

Then-coach Mike Shanahan explained that Henry was released less than a year after the Broncos signed him because the running back lacked commitment. Maybe at his day job, but that certainly wasn't the case in all aspects of Henry's life; in March we learned that he had 11 kids by 10 women, so he's clearly committed to something.

As it turns out, his astounding ability to procreate is the least of his worries, even though there was a time, after signing a five-year, $25 million deal, when he couldn't afford to make his child support payments (although, oddly, it didn't prevent him from dropping $250K on jewelry).

In 2002, Maurice Clarett was a freshman at Ohio State. He rushed for 1,237 yards in 11 games, averaged 5.6 yards per carry, and scored 18 touchdowns. He was also a big part in the Buckeyes' national championship victory over the Miami Hurricanes, scoring the winning touchdown in the second overtime.

But as the off-field incidents piled up, Clarett's star began to fade. He was suspended for the 2003 academic year for filing a false police report, and was later dismissed from school. The courts ruled that Clarett couldn't enter the NFL draft until three years after he graduated high school, which meant that he spent 2004 hanging out and getting fat.

When the news hit this morning that President Barack Obama was about to nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, sports fans around the country probably thought, "Why do I know that name?"

The answer is because Sotomayor has gained a little bit of fame over the past decade and a half for her involvement in sports-related court decisions.

In 1995, she issued the injunction that ended the Major League Baseball players' strike hours before replacement players were to take the field in official regular-season games. And when Maurice Clarett challenged the NFL's draft-eligibility rules and tried to enter the 2004 draft, Sotomayor was part of a three-judge panel on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled against Clarett, and upheld the NFL's minimum age requirement.

Travis Henry couldn't find work via conventional means -- NFL running back and porn star were probably his two best options -- so he turned to the streets. And four months after the Broncos released him, the Feds arrested him for allegedly trafficking cocaine.

But it gets worse (via the Denver Post):

Henry told one Billings, Mont., customer that he and his family were all "dead" if they didn't come up with $40,000 worth of cocaine lost when their home was robbed, according to the affidavit. To make up for the stolen cocaine, Henry and [James] Mack gave another customer 2 kilograms of fake cocaine, or drywall, along with 1 kilogram of real cocaine, the document says.

Turns out, the Billings, Mont., customer was an informant; he turned on Henry to avoid the whole "dead" thing. The account reads like a formulaic movie script, complete with Henry trying to outrun federal agents after he collected six bricks of coke from the informant. He was cuffed and stuffed a few houses away, which, along with his "I don't give a crap" Maurice Clarett approach to preparing for the NFL, pretty much guarantees the next time he plays football it'll either be via Madden or in the yard.

While it's easy to clown a guy for getting run down by law enforcement officials, Henry was carrying 13 pounds of cocaine. Hardly defensible, but it's something; Kenny Wright is just slow.

In recent years, the Chargers had the distinction of leading the division in arrests, but the Broncos are doing their best to wrest that title away. Earlier today, FanHouse's Michael David Smith wrote that rookie defensive lineman Marcus Thomas was arrested and charged with possessing a controlled substance. (Thomas' lawyer says, and I'm paraphrasing here, "that [very nice lady] set him up.")

As Adam Rank wrote after Denver drafted Thomas and college teammate Jarvis Moss last April: "Marijuana dealers are excited by the news of Moss and Thomas coming to town, seeing that both players have been suspended for marijuana offenses. It is as if the Broncos put together their draft board on 4/20."

To Moss' credit, he's avoided trouble, but why did the Broncos think Thomas wouldn't do something stupid given his history of, you know, doing stupid stuff?

Last year, after taking Thomas, Denver's general managers Ted Sundquist calmly explained why drafting Thomas wasn't a gamble. Obviously, that blew up in his face, but it sure did sound convincing. Here's what I wrote at the time: "Making the deal even easier was that the Broncos had a first-round grade on Thomas. In that sense, yeah, Thomas was worth a third-, fourth- and sixth-rounder. Assuming, of course, Thomas doesn't pull a Mo Clarett."

Good news for Thomas: he wasn't pulled over wearing body armor, swigging vodka and packing a machete. So there's that.

A.J. Nicholson is emblematic of what the Cincinnati Bengals used to be. Namely, a team full of shady characters who were given second, third, and fourth chances because of their unbelievable physical skills.

That roster-building philosophy has since given way to more conventional means of identifying and acquiring talent, and Nicholoson, along with Chris Henry, Reggie O'Neal and Odell Thurman, had a lot to do with that. Last May, Nicholoson was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend. That came four months after he was suspended from his final college game for violating team rules, and two months after he pleaded no contest to burglary and grand theft.

All of this proved to be too much even for the Bengals, and they released him in May, 2007. Now, though, the former Florida St. star is getting a chance at redemption. Yep, that's right, Nicholson is playing in the Arena League.

On the heels of yesterday's 34-20 defeat to the lowly Raiders, the Denver Broncos are quite rightly searching for answers to what's gone wrong over the last five quarters. There are plenty of places to assign blame. The defense has reverted to the porous unit of the first half and the offense turns the ball over too much. There are injuries, looming suspensions, questionable referee decisions and all the other reasons familiar to teams that can't seem to find a way to win.

Mark Kiszla of the Denver Post points the finger at Mike Shanahan and calls for the team to bring someone in to help the head coach with personnel matters. He points to the offseason acquisitions of Dre' Bly, Daniel Graham and Travis Henry, leaving out Simeon Rice for some reason, to underscore the need for help making those decisions. He could easily go further back and recall names like Dale Carter to further his argument that Shanahan isn't a shrewd evaluator of free talent.

But any discussion of Shanahan's personnel work must include the draft. That's been a mixed bag, at best, and does a better job of explaining why the Broncos have slipped to the second tier this season.

The following sentence should make Ohio State coach Jim Tressel a bit worried:

The new president at Ohio State University (Gordon Gee), the nation's largest, says college athletics must be fixed at the national level and he will have "zero tolerance" for player misbehavior at Ohio State.

Could you imagine an Ohio State the last few years without Troy Smith? Gee might have made it possible after Troy Smith ran into hot water for taking money from a booster several years back. Then there's the whole Maurice Clarett thing. Or Louis Irizarry. Like any big program the Buckeyes get a handful of bad apples. However, the new prez may not be in the mood for giving many second chances.

"I have zero tolerance for those who do not live by the rules of the university or by the rules of the organizing body," Gee said in an interview Friday. "It's very important for us to set a very high standard for ourselves."

It's noble, but football coaches tend to want a winning product and sometimes that means leniency with misbehaving players. We'll see how this shakes out in the coming years, but it is curious as we head into the 2007 season.

Just look at what happened at Vanderbilt under his watch when he felt the athletic department had lost its bearing:

Gordon Gee disbanded the athletics department at Vanderbilt University because he felt sports had become too separate from the rest of the university. He doesn't believe the same approach would work or is needed at Ohio State, but his philosophy is the same.

Update: Gee's been down this Ohio State road before, serving as University president from 1990 to 1997. The Buckeyes had good teams then, although it's a different coaching regime and a different competitive marketplace ten years later.

After last weekend's draft saw the Denver Broncos take two players with some off-field issues -- first-rounder Jarvis Moss and fourth-rounder Marcus Thomas, both former Florida Gators -- there were concerns that head coach Mike Shanahan was putting winning above all else. Maybe, maybe not.

Broncos owner Pat Bowlen isn't too concern either, even after new NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell started cracking down on questionable character guys.

"I think now, with the commissioner's conduct policies, which I fully support, I'm really comfortable as a league of where we're at on that issue. ... And that said, I'm not uncomfortable with the guys we drafted as far as being character guys and good players."

Moss was suspended one game last season for testing positive for marijuana; Thomas -- considered to be a top-15 talent -- failed two drug tests, and failed to meet the "conditions of his return to the Gators lineup before he was booted off the team."

I'm all for giving guys second chances, and apparently, so is Bowlen. It's easy to pan these picks a week after they were made, but if Moss and Thomas can stay out of trouble, everybody will be lauding Shanahan's prescience in a couple of years. Let's just hope both players can stay away from the Grey Goose and Kevlar.