Paul M. Banks is Founder/President of The Sports Bank.net,

Between now and NFL draft day, no potential top ten pick will be as scrutinized as Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen. And all of his so-called character issues, are truly just fabrications when you break them down. Last season, he completed 68 percent of his 425 total passes, threw 28 TDs with just four INTs. However, scouts and NFL “cognoscenti” alike are saying he’s immature and void of leadership skills. So where does the truth lie?

Let’s start by looking at his past, and how we got here.

Outside of Ryan Leaf (who many are currently and unfairly comparing Clausen to), one of the biggest quarterback busts of all time was Todd Marinovich, whose father prepared his son to be the perfect NFL quarterback every day since he was an embryo. Read the old Sports Illustrated story on Marinovich, all the details are present.

Later in life, Todd got away from his insanely domineering father, starting smoking the good weed, partying like a frat boy, and letting USC fix his tests and classes much more than they do for the average Trojan football player. He lost his work ethic when he hit the NFL, and was quickly out of football with absolutely nothing to show for it.

I’m not saying Clausen’s upbringing was that extreme, but during his boughy formative years in California, he spent a ton of time studying film and working on his mechanics, maybe at the expense of experiencing what all the “normal kids” were doing.

Kind of like a real world version of J.D. McCoy from “Friday Night Lights.” (Again-don’t take this comparison 100% literally, I doubt Clausen’s Dad forced him to chase away the trim that he was attracting or hit him after he won a high school playoff game, but you never know…by the way, McCoy has a pretty active Twitter page; for a guy who doesn’t actually exist).

However, I do know #7 was considered a quarterback version of Mozart when he was being recruited- a child prodigy whose skills for the craft transcended any that ever came before him. And the rivals.com sort pretty much showed everyone their O-faces in the days leading up his national letter of intent signing.

But if you’re spending all that time studying and refining your natural gifts, maybe your social skills will suffer? Look at how McCoy couldn’t handle his liquor at a party! Recall how Marinovich couldn’t grasp the ideas of moderation and self-control? But only those who know Clausen on a personal level can say for sure. And even if he is a little rough around the social edges, why should it affect his draft stock?

The Rap Sheet

His first year on campus, Clausen was cited for transporting alcohol as a minor. In August 2008, pictures appeared on the web conveying his participation in an underage drinking game. Then came the figurative and literal black eye last December. Clausen was sucker-punched outside a South Bend bar following another Notre Dame loss. We’re still not sure who started it, but it sounds like the event was very much like a famous scene in the legendary college football film “The Program.” Again, the film’s QB character, Joe Kane, is another person I’ve heard Clausen compared to.

On one hand, if you saw the beer olympics pictures- wouldn’t you just LOVE to punch him in the face if you saw that in real time?

On the other hand, let me borrow Team USA Hockey’s party line when Patrick Kane got in trouble for drunkenly beating up a cabbie this past summer: “when we were all 19, or 20 years old we all did stupid stuff.”

I did. I even got sucker-punched in the head my sophomore year at the University of Illinois. I sort of had it coming, I was running my mouth, but the d-bag who hit me had NOTHING to do with the situation, so it was totally uncalled for. And I didn’t even realize I was bleeding until I got back to the dorms and my friends told me how my hair resembled Ginger Spice (hey, it was 1998 and my hair was dyed blonde, so the dried blood gave me red-head streaks and…never mind, you know what? If I was at that party this weekend somehow, I would punch the 20-year-old version of myself in the head). Point is, yes, Clausen comes off like an arrogant douche a lot, but so did all of us at that age.

Leading us here. Michael Silver of Yahoo wrote in his article, “Clausen fighting off negative perception”:

“Todd McShay, a draft analyst for the ESPN network, was highly critical of Clausen’s leadership skills, claiming the polished passer was not considered a good teammate by other Irish players.”

Once again, Todd McShay’s observations are about as accurate as Rick Mirer’s completion percentage. Being eviscerated by McShay might be a compliment, since he knows nothing.  All of Clausen’s teammates, especially Golden Tate, vehemently stick up for him.

The guy who first broke the Clausen barfight story, WGN 720’s David Kaplan, is a McShay level tool himself. So the people putting him down in the MSM live in glass houses themselves. The way Clausen garners headlines, by draft day he may be portrayed as some kind of Frankenstein QB, the horrors of which the world has never seen.

Think the delusion of grandeur, over-ratedness, and petulance of Jay Cutler with the whining ability and insecure narcissism of Jeff George meets the self-destructive tendencies and general malfeasance of Marinovich. A lot of people want to paint the picture of the ND signal caller as this type of tragically-wasting-one’s-physical-gifts-because-he’s-a-severe-head-case story.

And they’re just plain wrong! Just because the kid looks like an emu doesn’t mean it should affect his draft stock.

Redemption

Clausen is working out with Cleveland and Buffalo, two teams that desperately need a quarterback (although the Browns now have Del Homme, so I don’t think they’ll go QB). Throw in Oakland at #8, and there’s three teams in the top ten looking for a field general. Sam Bradford is a mortal lock to go #1 to St. Louis, and Clausen is the next best prospect available.

In fact (despite what the critics say) Clausen could be the most NFL ready QB in this draft. However, it’s a double-edged sword:  the most NFL ready prospect now, but many believe he has no more long-term potential.

I call this the “Rashard Mendenhall rule” (when scouts and other football cognoscenti over-analyze prospects to the point of contradiction…with Mendenhall it was “he’s had so few carries, his best football is ahead of him” and/or “he only started for one season, he’s unproven”…well which one is it?

This spring, Clausen’s stock is enduring the same thing.

I greatly enjoyed the piece “Jimmy Clausen is an Alien Wizard” on Walter Football.com

It actually mentions Mendenhall specifically, although in reference to a different Clausen issue.

“By the way, does anyone remember that Rashard Mendenhall was mugged in Chicago within a month of being drafted by the Steelers? Does that make him a character concern? I mean, he could have instigated his own mugging. You don’t know. There’s about as much evidence for it as Clausen instigating getting punched in the face by a presumably drunken and disgruntled fan.”

I couldn’t agree more. The piece also mentions the best case debunking the bad teammate myth.

“Golden Tate, Michael Floyd and Kyle Rudolph all spent the summer before the 2009 season at Clausen’s Cali home, working on routes and getting to know each other better for the fall. It wasn’t mandatory, and any of the three could have gotten out of it by just saying they didn’t want to spend a lot of time so long away from home. They didn’t. Nobody spends a summer working and hanging out with a guy they think is an arrogant prick. Not a single player has said that Clausen was difficult to work or play with; not even on an anonymous basis.”

Finally, the best testimony I can give to Clausen’s character is a simple life lesson that I learned the hard way. When my crazy ex and I were parting ways and packing up my stuff she said to me: “I really enjoy listening to your opinions on things, I’m going to miss hearing everything you have to say about issues and stuff.” Of course, this was sandwiched in between countless insults and personal attacks, but my point is this:

If the person who hates you the most in this world, at the moment that their hate for you reaches it’s boiling point, somehow and for some reason compliments you, that my friends is the MOST genuine and TRUE compliment you can ever receive.

I hate Notre Dame with a passion, and I have no fondness at all  for Clausen. (Although you probably figured that out by my picture selection) However, I think his critics are way off the mark. I think he’ll be a very safe draft pick, and there should be no questions about his character at all.

To see where I think Clausen will go, read my NFL Mock Draft here

Paul M. Banks is Founder/President of The Sports Bank.net, an Upper Midwest sports webzine. He’s also a member of the Football Writers Association of America, the United States Basketball Writers Association and a sports writer for the Washington Times.com Communities and Walter Football.com

And just for the record, NFL players are not as dumb as they seem.  Bernanke most definitely IS a crook out to take everything you own.

h/t: Chicagoist via White House Flickr Page

Craig Ironhead Heyward or Cedric Benson? You make the call.

Cedric Benson is at it again. I guess we should have  expected that Benson wouldn’t just be able to let his play do the talking next Sunday in the Bengals’ tilt against the Bears. Perhaps anticipating laying an egg this week, Benson came out firing today alleging that the Bears organization spread rumors and only told the Bengals negative things about him prior to his signing.  I don’t know what was exchanged between the two organizations, but I’d imagine they revolved around “colossal bust”, “busting waistline”, “wasted draft pick”, “pick a time when he was wasted”. Sorry Cedric, but these aren’t rumors. These certainly are not positives, but come on, you would struggle to come up with positives from your stay in Chicago.

I’d like to think the Bears organization dealt with this situation with a certain amount of class, and listened to Virginia McCaskey, who always advised that “if you don’t have something good to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.” Following this advice, maybe they simply provided a flip book of some of Benson’s feats.

This is going to end poorly.

Told you so.

Fastest 40 time all year.

Sometimes I wonder: Is it just me?  Am I taking crazy pills?  Since I’m a Bears fan, I naturally hate Favre, but maybe people love him everywhere else?  Then I see this screenshot, and it calms me down and makes me realize I’m not the only sane one out there:

Sigh.  Truth be told I’ve googled about half of those things, but so have a ton of other people apparently.  Whew.

h/t: Deadspin

“I’ve Been Lazy” -Carlos Zambrano

Let’s start with Big Z and the lazy comment.  I am not going to argue that Z always does the smartest thing, but one thing he has is heart.  This situation is a case of sportswriters and sports bloggers taking a quote out of context in order to drum up a story, however.  The quote that had the media drooling over a chance to rip Z was “I’ve been lazy”.  Obviously a quote like that jumps off the page, especially in a piece about Zambrano trying to rehab a bad back in the middle of a Cubs divisional race.  If you read a little closer, you will see that in fact Zambrano has been anything but lazy, and not surprisingly, has just been stupid in his workout regimen.

“My problem is I’ve been lazy,” a contrite Zambrano admitted after his morning session. “There are things in life you don’t like to do, but you have to do them. I don’t like abs [abdominal muscles workouts] but I have to do them. I have to start doing them every day and be serious about it.

“I’ve got to be honest with me and with you [media] guys and the fans. I’m 28 years old, I’m not 16 anymore, I’m a big guy and I work hard every day [but] one of the things I don’t like to do is my abs, my core work.If I do abs every day and keep doing my job and be serious about my abs, I’ll be OK.”

That isn’t lazy at all.  He works out hard everyday, which is more than we can probably say for most baseball players going through the grind of a long summer.  He just hasn’t been intelligent about it.  If working his abs is the main problem, then this is a case of him owning up to it and hopefully taking the initiative (a little late, but still) to fix the issue.  My one main concern now is that based on Z’s entire quote, it appears to be a self-diagnosis.  Hopefully the trainers are the ones that told him this, and he didn’t just come up with it on his own, though with Z you never know.

“Devin is more of a go-get it guy, he is not really a back shoulder or jump up and get it [guy].  You learn from it. We made some mistakes. It’s the first preseason game. Luckily enough, we have some time to correct them and keep going.” -Jay Cutler

Do I even need to explain why this quote is not a big deal?  Sure, Jay should probably have kept his mouth shut and just taken the blame for a poorly underthrown ball.  If anything, however, he seems to be explaining how he is learning the capabilities and ranges of his receivers.  It seems he was under the mistaken impression that Hester was the kind of guy that would try to jump for a ball that was clearly underthrown, instead of watching the opposing team make an uncontested interception.  The quote itself was barely fingerpointing anyways, but the major concern is that this is a sign of how Cutler handles himself in front of the media.  He has clearly shown a tendency to blame others, and regardless of whether others are to blame or not, throwing your teammates under the bus is usually a poor decision.  My point is, what he said may have had some truth to it, but that doesn’t mean it should be said (ironic advice from me of all people, but under the circumstances he should have just shut up).

h/t: Bear Goggles On

Why are Halls of Fame so different in importance from sport to sport?  I’m not entirely sure, but here is a little ranking of the major ones and my reasoning for why they are as important or meaningless as they are:

1. Baseball Hall of Fame: While the actual site of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown may be just as important as the site of Football’s in Canton, Baseball gets the edge.  The sheer importance of making the Hall in Baseball transcends the sport.  When discussing a player’s accolades in baseball, the Hall of Fame is the highest honor one can achieve.  The sport is so obsessed with statistics and numbers that it makes sense the Hall would be so important.

2. Football Hall of Fame: Everyone has heard of Canton and the Football Hall of Fame.  While Championships are important in football, the Hall is something every great player aspires to.  It is not necessarily as central to the sport as baseball, but it is still very important.

3. Hockey Hall of Fame: I have actually heard of it, which is enough to put it above basketball’s Hall.  Please direct questions to StevieY about the Hockey Hall of Fame.

4. Basketball Hall of Fame: Why is the Hall so meaningless in basketball?  Here is my theory.  In no other sport is a team championship given so much credence when discussing the success of an individual player’s career.  Sure Charles Barkley is a Hall of Famer, but all anyone ever talks about is how he never won a Championship.  Basketball is a team game in a way that none of the other 3 sports are (besides hockey maybe).  Since the team is given importance above all else, Championships are how great players’ careers are judged, not individual accolades like induction into the Hall of Fame.

On November 2, Wayne Burdick (not pictured) was aboard a cruise ship in Miami waiting to depart on a Caribbean cruise. While still docked at the port, he set up his laptop and wireless card and accessed his Slingbox device which allowed him to watch a Chicago Bears game via an Internet connection. When the game was over, Burdick closed his computer, embarked on the cruise and returned home to find a bill from AT&T charging him over $27,000 for the three hours of Internet usage. Apparently, AT&T had charged Brudick the international rate for the access. At two cents per kilobyte, the total charge was $27,788.93 for the time spent watching the game.

Supposedly they settled for around $6,000 and eventually dropped it altogether admitting their mistake.  At least he got to see the Sex Cannon bring the Bears roaring back from a 10 point deficit and beat the Lions.  Unfortunately for Wayne, no amount of money will allow him to see the Sex Cannon play for the Bears again, since he’s no longer going to be a Bear.