Remember in college when you were too young to buy alcohol? Remember when you said, "Hey man, if I drive you to the beer store, will you pick me up a case?" Those were the days.
Right now Jimmy Clausen is living those days in South Bend, Indiana. Very dangerously however.
Clausen, the third of the Clausen brothers, is the only one not to yet attend the University of Tennessee. His oldest brother, Casey "The Ice Man", was a blue chip recruit out of California who signed with the Vols after the departure of Peyton Manning and Tee Martin. After a promising freshman year, Casey couldn't seem to get his high hoped career together. Injuries to both himself and key players around him (Michael Munoz, Kelley Washington) put a damper on what he could do as an immobile quarterback who was a great manager of the game. His own injuries didn't help his cause either...or a lack of arm strength.
Rick "Viper" Clausen originally committed to LSU. Since LSU was deep in quarterbacks and UT was obviously not, Rick transferred to UT and quickly became a third stringer behind true freshmen Brent Schaeffer and Erik Ainge. After injuries to both freshman, Rick was thrown into the Notre Dame game his junior year but rookie season with the Vols and looked like the quarterback who hadn't taken a snap since high school that he was. A month later he led the Vols to a 38-7 victory in the Cotton Bowl. Though he had even less skills than his brother Casey, Rick was one of the best field managers I have ever seen. He knew his offense, he knew how to get the ball to his receivers, and despite having no arm, he was a relentless leader as was shown on Monday Night Football in Baton Rouge down 21 points with the whole world rooting against UT. We all remember Riggs jumping into the endzone in OT.
Enter Jimmy, the golden boy. He doesn't have a sweet Top Gun nickname yet, but it should have something to do with Sun Down. June 23rd, Jimmy picked up citation #1 for transporting alcohol as a minor. Clausen has entered a pretrial diversion program after receiving his misdemeanor citation. I don't know why I didn't know about this, but I'm guessing you didn't either.
To my knowledge, reports of this started coming out on August 17th. Clausen, who had a 23 year old go in and buy his booze for him picked up a handle of Smifnoff, 200 mL's of Jack Daniel's and a case of The Natural Light.
Clausen sure knows how to get after it. Clausen has to be getting some cash to go to ND. If this is the case, he needs to stop buying the Natural first of all. Secondly, especially as a freshman who could potentially start for one of the most prestigious programs in the country, he needs to learn how to keep himself out of trouble.
The best example of a freshman coming into school that I have ever heard about was Chris Leak. As I am sure you know, Leak broke many if not most national high school passing records before signing with Florida. Leak came in and was committed to winning and didn't mess around with anything besides football. That's how you gain veteran's respect. Not having them buy you booze getting the both of you citations.
So "The Chosen One's" career is off to a thriving start at Notre Dame. He's expected to break many records. Good thing he already has one.
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