In the quickest Supreme Court appeal since Bush v. Gore, the high court (I refuse to ever call them "The Supremes") has ruled that Ohio State sophomore Maurice Clarett is ineligible for the NFL draft.
Should the decision be reversed after Saturday's draft, the league would then hold what is I believe its first supplemental draft since Brian Bosworth's year. If not, Clarett's sure-to-be-mediocre NFL career will have to begin a year later than planned.
What's interesting is, should a supplemental draft be held the draft order would be the same as that of the regular draft. Which means that San Diego, which has the #1 pick Saturday, would draft #1 again for the second draft, and could grab Clarett or USC's Mike Williams and thus get two top-of-the-draft picks in one year. Then again, any team making a supplemental pick would forfeit its first round pick next year.
That's all I'll say about the draft until afterwards; I'm just hoping the Vikings remember to make their pick this year.
Posted by Stephen Silver at April 22, 2004 05:19 PMOne of the Giants' biggest mistakes of the '90s was choosing Duke QB Dave Brown (remember him?) in a supplemental one year, forfeiting their #1 for the next year. Of course, Big Blue wound up sucking, but had already coughed up what I think was a 7 or 8 pick for a complete stiff. It happened while I was in middle school, so I'm going to take a random stab and say 1992 or 3.
Posted by: Matthew :) at April 22, 2004 06:15 PMthe only way for a supreme court decision to be reversed is if the Court reverses itself. The only way to do that would be if, say, Mike Williams brought suit in federal court that then made its way up to the Supreme Court, at which point the Court could then reverse its decision in (I presume it was) Clarett v. NFL.
Posted by: LilB at April 25, 2004 02:31 PM