Spano doc not amazing filmmaking, but the story is so mind blowing that it doesn't matter.

Watched Free Spirits last night. I remember watching a bunch of those players, but had no idea of this story--even with the ESPN teasers.

I thought the first 45 minutes was interesting but nothing outstanding. However, the last 15 minutes was absolutely mind-blowing. IMHO, the film-makers spent far too much time laying the groundwork and far too little with the real meat of this story.

Anyone here ever see Kevin Shaw's "Goose"? It's the only episode I haven't seen and can't find any trace of it anywhere.

YOUNGSTOWN BOYS starting soon.

it's about....YOUNGSTOWN BOYS.

yeaaaaaaaah

Looking forward to this one

not watching it now fwiw, i don't even like youngstown. haha gonna dvr it later and watch it when i'm bored and the cavs aren't on

Lol young tressel was creepy

The background voices they played moralizing about Clarett wanting to go pro made me kinda furious

Haha I'd forgotten that the judge that heard his case was Judge Judy's sister

eta: and iirc Sonya Sotomayor flipped it on appeal before she joined the Supreme Court

Can't say I foresaw both his mom and the mother of his child being totally normal seeming people

omg a Tonya Harding - Nancy Kerrigan 30 for 30

Good deadspin piece on Harding's ex-husband here

I loved every line that his momma said. IMO he was one responsible Dad from being a boring multi-millionaire football star.

still haven't watched, but my FB feed is clowning...

"an hour in and they haven't mentioned mickey monus??"

"i love him, but tressel has been a snake since his days with ray isaac at ysu"

"monus had isaac whipping ferraris around ytown"

"too bad all of our local friends turned down their espn opportunities at fame"

"everyone from warren can tell a better story"

"most uninformed 30 for 30 ever"

"terrible story to anyone that actually knows the behind the scenes stuff"

"selling weed out of his explorer in the trumbull homes (project in the city he played HS football)"

so yeah. that's why i waited to watch it. haha

i know you'll be all 'okaaaay wipaaaar' but judging from what people around here are saying, *I* could tell this story better. and i'm being serious. mickey monus was a ysu "booster" that owned a bunch of grocery stores around here...tressel "introduced" him to ray isaac, the qb that brought ysu to prominence in the mid 90's by, in his own words, "bringing them together and then leaving them alone". okaaaaay bro.

this is some of my michigan bias coming through, but tressel has ALWAYS been a crook. nobody that's ever come from youngstown HASN'T been if you think about it. he's just real good at playing the game.

and ****, while we're at it, have they brought up how maurice's broke ass mom all of a sudden got a great job in warren and a 100k house within a month of him deciding to transfer from austintown (ytown suburb) as a record breaking freshman to warren harding? i bet they didn't.

love my hometown.

and i met tressel. he was at the school i was teaching at recruiting. it was during class and i had a prep and was walking down the hall and WTF THAT'S TRESSEL.

to be fair, he was pretty awesome. i lightly hassled him about beating UM (this was like, a week or two after the #1 v #2 game in 2006 i think) but he was pretty cool about everything. i have a pic of me and him with me smirking that an osu fan teacher took of us floating around somewhere.

then teachers started to come up to him and he was signing post it notes for people. i head nodded him and started to go back to wherever i was going and he said:

him: hey, what was your name again? would you like an autograph too? (with one of those ****-eating hilarious grins that you can't even get mad at)

me: wiper, but i don't want your autograph......well, unless you write "go blue"

i remember a couple of the female groupie teachers were LAWNMOWERED about that, but god bless his youngstown soul, he took a post it note and wrote:

wiper,

go bucks!

go blue!

jim tressel

i promptly took the post it note to my room, creased over the 'go bucks!' part, took it to the copy room, laminated it, and i still have it hanging off my willie the wolverine stuffed wolverine on my bookshelf like, 8 feet from me right now.

/coolstorywiper

Wiper still brings it to all of his cocktail parties in Ohio.

Just kidding.,

Tressel was the uncle of one of my kinda friends in college, all i got.

It really wasn't a "how crooked were they type" piece imo. It was more a typical rise to fame fall from grace and the trip back thing. I'm eager for you to watch it and give some feed back. His mom did come across very well though. As someone else pointed out both her (Mo's mom) and his gf seem real normal. Back at that time I lurked the huddle as much as I do on 2+2 and I remember the venom spewing at Mo was pretty bad.

I know I didn't care much for him at the time, I was still "drinking the kool-aid" in love with the Buckeyes back then. Alot of the changed when my Brother-in-Law told me he met Maurice at TOCI while doing Kairos. He was really impressed with him and at that point I started rooting for him again.

Now Tressel is a whole other post....


Oh I remember hearing from one of my Michigan buds about Prescott Burgress going to Michigan cus Mo hooked up with his gf. Confirm/deny? Also remind me of what happened to Louis Izzary(sp) when he xfered back to YSU. There were issued right?

My 2c as far as Tressel goes....


Like I said back then I lurked on the huddle probably more than 2+2, and passed off most of the Tress stuff from you side of the state as disgruntled Michigan fans wanting the 90's back.

My brother works for the City of Ann Arbor and one of his duties is working traffic on game day. I think it was 05 or maybe 7 and as the OSU bus passed him getting on 94 the team was still going nuts. My brother sent out and e mail to tress saying how cool it was the team was still so pumped after the game. Tress sent him an e-mail back saying they were cheering at him (my brother) because he was decked out in his Scarlett and Gray. They exchanged some more e-mail and Tress even sent him an autographed pic and a couple of other small items.

Then when tat-gate was going down, Tress said he didn't read all his e-mails or something like that. It hit me that man your FOS. You read my brother's e-mail, an municipal worker from AA and not some attorney who is also an alum. Come on Man. Pretty much lost all interest in college football since. My eyes were opened and I just can't go back to shutting them anymore. Do I think OSU gets hammered while the SEC and Miami get passed? Yes? Do I get worked in a frenzy like I would have 6-10 years ago? Nope. But that might be age also.

Had a long day at work so I watched Once Brothers for the 50th time on my phone. Just an amazing watch. If you don't get a little choked up when Vlade talkes to Drazen's mother about the burden he carried because they were never able to reconcile, something is wrong with you.

So if claurett played 3 seasons of clean football with OSU would he have been an all purpose star RB in the NFL? Is that bad 40 time just a product of drugs, alcohol, lack of preparation? Or was that where he was at his peak as a freshman and his NFL career would be bleak even with 3 clean years at OSU.

Thanks,

Good read, thanks

It's still a crap shoot even if you are a star in college, especially for RB. It's hard to be an elite RB when you are drinking that much, especially when you are doing it in training camp.

Odds would have still been stacked against him, but he would have had a shot. I mean hell, McGahee is still in the league and tore up his knee around the same time Clarett played and is older than Clarett, so he certainly had a shot. Dude was talented as hell, but injuries take a toll in an already competitive environment, so even if he kept it together, it was no guarantee.

That's sort of why he was so interested in going to the NFL ASAP.

Thanks.

Rivals had his 40 time listed at 4.5 out of HS. So his 2 years of troubles definitely hindered that aspect of his game.

Definitely a crap shoot still on how good he would be but he was most likely would have been utilized in the league.

No telling if he would be Trent Richardson or frank gore. Just a tricky evaluation

Just learned Frank Gore's full name is Franklin Delano Gore. LOL.