Josh Luchs, the agent who wrote a 2010 Sports Illustrated cover story on the shady world of college athletics, wrote a book on his 18 years as a sports agent. Rivals.com has an excerpt from "Illegal Procedure: A Sports Agent Comes Clean on the Dirty Business of College Football" on the NFL combine workout of former Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett. Go read the whole thing. In the meantime, Shutdown Corner picked out some of the highlights.
• Before the 2005 draft, Clarett was staying with an Israeli mobster, Hai Waknine, who had helicopters hovering over his Marina del Rey compound and wore a ankle monitoring bracelet.
• Clarett was introduced to Haknine by rappers Fizz and Boog of B2K.
• As Luchs explains, Maurice doesn't roll on Shabbas, even when Shabbas is a Wednesday afternoon. He details a story in which Clarett cut short a meeting with a Shrine Bowl representative because of a Jewish ritual that was still two days away.
• Unlike Rocky and Apollo in "Rocky III," Clarett refused to run on the sand.
• At the 2005 combine, Clarett ran his infamous 4.7 in the 40-yard dash. Luchs explains how Clarett lost weight before the event, still ran slow and eventually quit in the middle of tests.
This excerpt doesn't get into it, but what's most amazing is that Mike Shanahan still took Clarett with the last pick of the third round in that year's draft, ahead of Darren Sproles, Marion Barber and Brandon Jacobs, among others.