Illegal Procedure

by Josh Luchs

  It would just be an expensive but funny story if it weren’t for the ending. Albert was signed as an undrafted free agent by the Panthers, went to the Raiders, then went to the CFL, then the UFL. Jesse was drafted in the fifth round by the Titans in 2006 but died in an alcohol-related car accident in 2009 at the age of twenty-six.

  Close Encounters of the Sleazy Kind

  Maybe the reason I find most agents claiming “ethics” laughable is that despite my own long and convoluted path to reform, I never ceased to be amazed at how low some guys could go. Before the start of the same season we tried to sign the Samoans, Steve Feldman and I were approached by a wanna-be agent peddling a player like a hot watch on a street corner. I got a call from a guy named Chuck Price, who’d been involved with a company called Air 7, an academy for quarterbacks run by a great QB coach named Steve Clarkson. Price, who wasn’t yet an agent, was dangling Matt Leinart, the quarterback from USC, the 2004 Heisman Trophy winner as a junior, and the odds-on favorite to win it again. USC was the preseason number-one team in the country, and Leinart was basically the hottest guy in football at the time. Price had talked to other players including Manuel White Jr., whom we’d also talked to and White supposedly told Price I claimed to have represented Terrell Suggs, which evidently impressed Price enough to come see us. He sat in our office, going on and on about how he hated Gary Wichard and just wanted the best representation for Leinart. Oh, and one other thing—he also wanted over 50 percent of the commission for himself.

  Later, much later, we came to find out that Price also dangled Leinart in front of Wichard, during which he relayed the story that I claimed to have represented Suggs, which led to Gary going ballistic, calling me up yelling and screaming that I hadn’t represented anyone (and the Suggs story would reappear later in my legal battle with Gary). Price was pitting one agent against another to squeeze out the best deal he could, not for the player, but for himself. Nice business. Eventually, after a lot of agent-shopping, Leinart ended up with Tom Condon of CAA (after hiring and firing Steinberg) … with Chuck Price, not surprisingly being named as co-agent. One other thing: Not only was Price an officer of Air 7 academy, but as of 2005, so were Gary Wichard and Bob Leinart, Matt’s father. That’s the year before Matt Leinart, the country’s number-one player, played his final season at USC. Are all of those intertwined relations okay? Do they constitute possible conflict? Or at least warrant close scrutiny? It’s not as if the corporate papers are hard to find. They’re public record and I found them in preparation for my lawsuit with Gary Wichard. I wonder why the NFLPA, the NCAA, or USC never found them. Or if they did, why they didn’t raise an issue. But at that point, nothing should have surprised me. Because there’s always a more sordid, more twisted, more bizarre story.

  Maurice Clarett: Shooting Star

  I got a call one day in the fall of 2004 from my wife’s brother, who, like the rest of the family, worked in real estate. In his work he’d come across someone named Hai Waknine, an Israeli “businessman” (later referred to as a “mob figure,” “mobster,” or “gang member” by the L.A. Times, ESPN, and various online news sources). My brother-in-law said, “Have you ever heard of a guy named Maurice Clarett?” and I started laughing because nobody who does what I do within five hundred miles of a college football game hadn’t heard of Clarett. After Ohio State won the National Championship, he attempted to declare his eligibility a year earlier than the NFL allows. His decision wasn’t so much trying to set a ground-breaking legal precedent, as it was a practical one. He’d been suspended by OSU for the 2003 season for misconduct, so his choices were to sit out a whole season, then play another year as an amateur, or go pro and get paid. It wasn’t a tough call.

  Clarett won the first round in his legal battle for eligibility but lost round two in a higher court. Once he lost, and his attorney Alan Milstein reported to NBCsports.com that he’d hired an agent, he forfeited all his remaining college eligibility. At that point, he had no choice but to wait for the next draft, which was what he was doing. My brother-in-law said that Hai Waknine was taking care of Clarett—who was living at Waknine’s house—and they were looking for help in representation. Wow! Clarett was not exactly an ethics major, but he was the kind of high-profile player that could really put us on the map. It was a chance to start recruiting big-ticket prospects again. So my brother-in-law made a call and patched me in to Hai Waknine, and other than him being a little scattered, a little ADD maybe, the opportunity seemed legitimate and I started thinking I could end up representing this kid. I told Steve and even though we’d only been together a few months, he trusted me and said he was all in.

  I put together a Playbook on Clarett. Even though we were going to meet with Hai first before we could get an audience with Maurice, I took a page from Gary. I came prepared in case Hai wanted to see what we’d do, in case we did meet with Maurice, in case whatever. Gary was always prepared. He had “preparation” written at the top of every day of his pocket calendar book. He preached never, ever going anywhere unless and until you’re ready for whatever eventualities may come. I made preparation my mantra like he had.

  We arrived at Waknine’s house, or rather compound, in Marina del Rey, right on the water. As we drove up, helicopters hovered. I just figured they were checking traffic, but later I realized they were checking Hai. We rang the bell and an enormous black guy opened the door, big enough to play defensive lineman, with a big gun in his belt bulging out of his sports jacket. He showed us to this expansive sofa facing a wall of glass overlooking the ocean. After a few minutes, Hai Waknine entered—a heavyset, dark-skinned, balding Israeli with a tic, sort of a mild case of Tourette’s. He sat on the sofa flanked by gorgeous European models, crossed his legs, and revealed an ankle bracelet. The kind that notifies the Feds if you leave town. He gave us a tour, as nice as could be, and told us to try his special espresso. I don’t drink coffee, but I know enough to drink it when a guy with an ankle bracelet tells me to.

  He told us Maurice was working out with Charles Poliquin, who, according to Body Builder online magazine, was known for “producing faster athletes,” having trained several Olympians, NHL players, and NFL wide receiver David Boston, of whom Maurice Clarett was enamored. On the one hand, we were salivating because Clarett had superstar potential, but on the other hand, he wasn’t doing this right at all. First, living with an alleged Israeli mobster, likable or not, isn’t good. Second, David Boston had tested positive for GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate), a banned drug associated with bodybuilding, and had been dropped by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Whether they were true or not, rumors of steroids swirled around Poliquin’s techniques, and Boston had done nothing to distance himself from them. It seemed a distinct possibility that Maurice could run the risk of being “juiced” and maybe test that way.

  I told Hai about Steve and his credentials. Hai told me he’d met Maurice through his relationship with Fizz and Boog, two rappers of the group B2K, and now had a contract giving him a big piece of Maurice in exchange for providing him trainers, lending him a new BMW, and giving him a video game console for Madden Football and a roof over his head—with a stunning ocean view. Hai had control over who would be Maurice’s agent, along with everything else in Maurice’s life, and set us up for a face-to-face meeting.

  When we all got together, I showed Maurice our Playbook. Maurice made it clear that he wanted more than anything to play in the Senior Bowl. I’d already contacted Steve Hale, who runs it, and I knew they didn’t have a place for Maurice. It just wasn’t happening. Having tried to come out as a sophomore, Maurice was still technically in his junior year and the Senior Bowl had one overriding rule: like the name says, you have to be senior.

  For the next meeting, I arranged for my old acquaintance Jack Hart, the director of the East-West Shrine Game, to fly out to L.A. and personally pitch Maurice on playing the Shrine. The Senior Bowl is more prestigious but playing in the Shrine would fill a hole in his story. If he could break off a run or two in
practice, then pro scouts could see how good he still was, even though he hadn’t played football in two years. It would answer the question, “What has Maurice Clarett been doing for two years out of football?” If he played well, we could say he’d been working out, training, practicing. We could say he was ready, and even if he’d been playing Madden for six months straight, as long as he performed well, we’d be right. Jack shared my vision of taking Maurice around to Shriners hospitals, looking for PR opportunities, and rehabbing his image as a guy who cared about kids. We’d put his face on the Shrine Game ads on buses and billboards, give him his chance to be the star in the game, a win-win for everyone.

  I prepped Jack, the Shriner, the best I could for what he was going to see—the guard with the guns, maybe helicopters, foreign models parading around in almost nothing, the alleged Israeli mobster (I called him a “real estate investor”), an oceanfront palace. We walked in, sat down, and waited until they ushered Maurice in as if he were royalty. Jack made his earnest pitch: the history of the game, the hospitals, the good work the Shriners do for kids, their role in the community, the photo ops, how well it reflects on the players, some of the high draft choices who’ve played.

  Maurice listened and then asked what other big-name players were committed to being in the game. The answer was, so far, none … there were a lot of good prospects but it was too early to send out invites. Maurice asked Jack to give him the phone numbers of the players he wanted so Maurice could call them and convince them to play. Jack couldn’t do that, and said so. It would break every rule of confidentiality. He offered to show Maurice some of the names but not their personal contact information. This didn’t sit well with Maurice. He’d been living with an Israeli Larry Flynt for months, absorbing the house culture, operating by the house rules. Maurice had seen that every Friday night, when the sun went down, no matter what they were doing, all work ended. Hai, his entourage, and his family lit candles and said their evening prayers. So, at that moment, when the discussion wasn’t going his way, Maurice suddenly stood up and said, “This meeting is over. It’s Shabbat.” He walked out of the room. Jack turned to me and said, “What’s he talking about?” I said, “I have no idea. Today is Wednesday.” I rode with Jack to the airport, apologizing, and he was very understanding. The whole ride, I was thinking, What can we possibly do to reshape this kid’s image?

  During my time with Gary, I’d gotten to know Tom Friend, a writer with ESPN the Magazine. He’d done several pieces on Gary’s players and I thought he would be ideal for a puff piece on Maurice. I set up a preliminary meeting for Friend, Hai, and Maurice at my house. That led to a second meeting, held at the office of David Kenner, an associate of Hai and coincidentally the attorney for the infamous gangster rap label Death Row Records, founded by Suge Knight and Dr. Dre—just to add to Maurice’s wholesome entourage. My goal was to get a story written about how Maurice was preparing for the draft, his training and conditioning, as the only player ever to go through the NFL Combine twice, a pretty juicy story for Friend and ESPN the Magazine.

  Hai and his people had a different agenda. He and Maurice thought it was a good opportunity to tell his side of the story of his troubles and suspension at Ohio State. According to the official reports at the time, Maurice had publicly criticized OSU officials for not paying for his airplane ticket home for a friend’s funeral. A few months later, a teaching assistant at Ohio State told the New York Times that Maurice had been given favorable treatment by a professor, but upon investigation there had not been adequate evidence for academic misconduct. However, in the 2003 athletic year, Maurice was suspended for filing a false police report, claiming that in excess of $10,000 in goods had been stolen from a car he’d borrowed, and for having misled investigators. In addition, Maurice had pleaded guilty to a lesser criminal charge.

  Now refuting the official version, Maurice told Friend that when the misconduct investigation took place, he didn’t tell the whole truth in the police report on the car break-in because he wanted to protect coach Jim Tressel and his brother Dick, an assistant coach, who had arranged for him to “borrow” cars from local dealers. The truth, Maurice said, was that the school had promised him passing grades to stay eligible, professors easy on ballplayers, do-nothing independent-study courses, a tutor to do his homework (Bob Eckhart, who’d helped other players), a car-of-the-month, a no-work job, and bonuses for reading stories to boosters’ kids, the amount of the bonus determined by how well he’d played the previous Saturday. After OSU beat Michigan in November 2002, a game in which Maurice ran more than a hundred yards and a touchdown, a booster paid him more than $6,000.

  According to Maurice, Tressel’s staff arranged for him and at least twenty other players to receive special treatment, including allowing them to live off campus their freshman year though it was against university rules. (I can’t say what is true and what isn’t but this is what Maurice maintained in his interview with Tom Friend.) What had begun as my spin for a light-weight piece on prepping for the draft had suddenly exploded into a juicy exposé for Friend and ESPN. Partway through the process, Hai and his group started to balk. Either they realized this wasn’t such a good idea or they decided that if they went ahead with it, they wanted to be guaranteed the cover of the magazine. Friend couldn’t promise the cover. But the story had been told.

  I did my best to run interference, almost always working through Hai, rarely directly contacting Maurice. They wanted to kill the article. And they weren’t the only ones. I learned the Ohio State University Athletic Director, Andy Geiger, had flown to New York for what turned out to be a contentious meeting with the bigwigs at ESPN the Magazine, trying to bury the story. It was too late. Friend wrote it, ESPN ran everything they could corroborate, and it caused a furor, albeit short-lived. There was a burst of outrage … and then nothing. Ohio State adamantly denied everything. They attacked Maurice’s credibility—not hard to do. Friend got hate mail, even death threats from Ohio State fans. The NCAA took no more than a cursory look. Why didn’t they launch a big investigation, with all these alleged rules violations? Simple: they didn’t want to know. Or maybe they realized they lacked the authority to find out since Maurice was no longer a student-athlete and didn’t have to answer their questions. Of course, later, the NCAA would turn the heat up, largely due to public pressure, and the whole ugly matter would be exposed (much more about this later).

  By this time, my role with Steve had evolved into being the specialist on the draft and the rookie process. I was the blunt force, telling Maurice how he was being perceived in the draft process, what his deficiencies were, and how to fill the holes to get drafted as high as possible. But Maurice had an urge to constantly do what was bad for him, as anyone could see by taking one look at his living situation and entourage. Steve and I used to joke, if you put a pile of shit and a pile of money on the table, Maurice would reach for the pile of shit. He was probably the first player I worked with who I didn’t like personally. We had moments of clarity in which I’d find him to be a sympathetic character, but they wouldn’t last and he’d revert to prima donna. Thankfully, Steve had a higher tolerance level for his behavior. Ultimately Maurice signed with us, but it was clear that this would be our one rep agreement with only Steve Feldman’s name on it.

  Still, the shit had hit the fan from the ESPN article and it was up to both of us to clean it up. This was January 2005, time to focus on the Combine, training, and then the draft. After we had signed our other players and set them up in apartments in Long Beach, we got them started with our trainer, Chuckie Miller, out of his private gym, on the field at Long Beach City College and up and down the sand dunes at the beach. Chuckie had played for many years and had trained a lot of great players. Hai would often brag to us that Maurice’s training was so far superior to what anyone else was doing, saying that he’d run circles around the other guys at the Combine. But when I heard about his regimen, there was one thing missing: running. Not to state the obvious, but Maurice
was a running back. And we were never allowed to see him actually training. Except once when he was working with the USC Olympic sprinter Quincy Watts, before he started to work with Poliquin. Even then, even working with an Olympic sprinter, Maurice wouldn’t run; he just jogged around the track. We wanted Maurice to work out with Chuckie Miller on the sand dunes, so Steve and I went to Hai’s house and got Maurice to follow us out to Long Beach. When we arrived at the dunes, Maurice was in his car on the cell phone and wouldn’t get off. Finally, he finished his conversation and said he doesn’t run on the sand. We told him, “It offers great resistance and strengthens all the muscles in your lower body. It helps with explosiveness. If you can run shuttle drills and three-cone combine drills in the sand, it’s much easier to do it on a flat surface, when you get timed.” He just said, “No.” Oh shit, we thought, we’re in for trouble at the Combine.

  In February, Steve and I told our concerns to Hai and David Kenner (whose whole rap history mesmerized Maurice), hoping they could influence Maurice. I wasn’t just a little worried; I was going berserk over what could happen at the Combine in Indianapolis. We reiterated that Maurice had to show up at the Combine at the same weight or less than what he’d been a year earlier, because he sure looked too heavy. Maurice also had to nail the interview process and give the answers the NFL people wanted to hear to every question, showing that he’d matured, especially in light of the ESPN story. We told Hai and David that he had to do better on the Wonderlic than last time. It seemed as if they were listening, especially Hai, who, after all, was paying the bills on everything. He knew Maurice was his investment, boom or bust. We started working with Maurice right away on the interview and the Wonderlic, but his weight was not looking good. He refused to get on a scale.