Clown(ey)-ing Around

So if you’re not an SEC nut, like most people in my home state of Pennsylvania who swear that the Big 10 is the only conference worth it’s salt in this great nation, you may have not heard this just yet. Tom Sorenson of the Charlotte Observer in an Op-Ed piece said Jadeveon Clowney AKA Sir Hits-A-Lot, The South Carolina football standout, that Clowney, the odds-on favorite for the top pick in next years NFL draft should sit out of the 2013-2014 season to protect his body and protect his stock. It’s an incredible idea, there’s no precedent for this idea or is there?

On ESPN yesterday a commentator compared this to the Steven Strausburg situation where the Nationals benched their star pitcher to make sure that he wasn’t going to throw out his already surgically repaired elbow even though he was having a phenomenal season. The Nationals took some serious heat for doing it but if Strasburg comes out on the extra rest and has an ERA through the first 5 starts of a sub-2 ERA was it a good choice? I think you have to say yes. There has to be something there that makes sense to bench a star for the sake of the star, especially in football.

Tragedies are all over the place when it comes to sports. In the media, how often do you see a character who was supposed to be great but then his knee explodes and he no longer has that scholarship that gets him out of his ghost town? We see it all the time. There was an episode of criminal minds where the murderer was the football star that wrecked his knee and became the town garbage man. Not saying that South Carolina wouldn’t take care of Clowney if anything negative happened to him but there is that moment where the kid had his way to greener pastures and then is literally hamstringed by an injury. I think this is where we’re starting to get the idea of perhaps sitting potentially the best player on the field in every game he’s going to play his junior season. Though it's hard to say that it isn't a legitimate concern after seeing Marcus Lattimore, South Carolina's incredible running back destroy both knees in consecutive seasons. 

 

So should he sit or not? Of course not. I want to see how Clowney does when literally the entire planet is scheming against him. The SEC, who is unquestionably the best football conference in college football is going to be planning entirely new blocking schemes to stop this dude. If he is really the best player on the defensive side of the ball and potentially the best player in all of sports I want to see him prove it. Teams outside of the conference are scheming against him for fear of having to play him in a bowl game. I think that if Clowney is the best player he needs to continue to show up and ringing the bells of players all over the place.

I think this is the product of the meta-argument about player safety but what does it mean when the answer to protect the player is to simply not play the sport? I think that is where the chain reaction will lead to, if the answer is to not play for the best player then why play for anyone? It’s the wrong answer. It’s going to leave some of the best two-sport athletes to put the pads on the shelf and stick to the bat or the basketball.