After a dominant victory by the Clemson Tigers last night to win the college football national title, Trevor Lawrence is a name that literally might not ever be more popular and praiseworthy than it is today. The true freshman led Clemson to a convincing win over the Alabama Crimson Tide, the big, bad, bullies on the block.
We love to see dynasties fall and underdogs win. It's why everyone outside of Massachusetts cheers against the Patriots and everyone outside of California cheers against the Warriors. It's also why we love March Madness. The underdog stories are always the best ones. They are the ones that turn into movies years later and no one would believe if they didn't see it happen with their own eyes. And while Dabo Swinney referred to his team as "little old Clemson" after last night's win, I think we are getting to the point where there are two bullies on the block, and there is no such thing as "little old Clemson" anymore.
That is a subject for another day though, because watching last night's game, I thought of something else as Lawrence was making throw after throw, play after play, converting third downs with ease, keeping cool, and smiling all the way to a 44-16 victory.
I thought he started the game a little overhyped, but for a 19 year old true freshman, that shouldn't really have surprised anyone. What could have surprised a lot of people though was how he settled down and played the game of his life on the biggest stage of all. After a close first quarter, Clemson was completely dominant, outscoring Alabama 30-3 the rest of the way.
Lawrence finished the game 20 for 32, with 347 passing yards and 3 touchdowns, as well as 27 yards rushing. Those are very impressive numbers, and watching the game made them even more impressive. He was making NFL-caliber throws against a defense filled with NFL-caliber talent. He stood in the pocket and got hit a few times, but he kept making plays, and I don't know how anyone could watch that game and not come away extremely impressed by what he did.
After the game, Lawrence said he wanted to come back to Clemson and win more titles, and I'm sure that was music to the ears of Clemson fans everywhere. He won't be eligible for the draft until 2021, so he could at least win two more championships. That made me think though, why should that be the case? Lawrence's stock is probably as high as it will ever be right now. Today.
Could he win titles in 2020 and 2021 at Clemson? Sure, he could. No matter how good he is though, the odds of that are not very high, and it could be through no fault of his own that the Tigers don't win two more consecutive titles. However, because of the NFL rule stating that any player entering the draft must be three years removed from high school, Lawrence really has no other choice.
I have never been a fan of the one-and-done rule in college basketball, but that's what the rules are, so that's just what we are used to now. I did believe, and still do believe, that if a player thinks he or she is ready to play professional basketball at the age of 18, then they should be able to enter the draft. If the player has the abilities, then they will succeed. If not, then they made the wrong decision. It shouldn't be anyone else's place to prevent someone from making a bad decision if that person really wants to. LeBron James and Kevin Garnett were 18 years old and made good decisions. Sebastian Telfair and Robert Swift were 18 years old and made bad decisions. It's the way of the world.
I have said it before, and I will say it again. If an 18 year old fresh out of high school wants to try to become a world-famous violinist or mechanic instead of going to college, they have the right to do just that. And if an 18 year old fresh out of high school wants to try to become a world-famous athlete, they should have that same right.
Whenever I argue that point though, and I think whenever sports fans in general argue that point, they use basketball as their prime example. We have seen Hall of Fame players jump straight from high school to the NBA and succeed. Hockey isn't as popular a sport, but we do see very young players succeed. Sidney Crosby was only the fourth player in league history to score 100 points as an 18 year old. Bryce Harper won National League Rookie of the Year as a Major League Baseball player at 19 years old. These cases are rare, but it doesn't mean they are impossible.
Football has always been different though. For a variety of reasons, we don't see players that young in the NFL. The NFL has had the three years removed from high school rule for a while now, and we all seem to simply have accepted it. I always just thought the NFL game was too violent for players so young, so I never really questioned the rule. As I watched Lawrence last night though, I wondered why it was that I never even thought about how unfair the rule might actually be.
Why should Lawrence have to stay in school two more years? He was making NFL throws last night, he is 6'6" tall, and weighs 210 pounds, so he already has a body at least suitable for an NFL quarterback. 210 pounds might be a little light, but on an NFL diet and workout plan, he could add weight and have an NFL quarterback prototype shaped body pretty soon.
He can increase his stock and value by playing two more years in school, but can it really get much higher than it is right now? If he entered the draft this year, I think he would have a legitimate chance to be the first quarterback taken. You can't get any higher than that. But, it doesn't matter, because he won't be able to enter the draft anyway. That brings into question why the NFL has this rule in place. I can't claim to know for sure, but I can make some assumptions that I would like to believe are at least somewhat possible.
The NFL and the NCAA are two separate entities. They are controlled by two completely independent groups of people who have their own best interests at heart. However, Lawrence is a great example of how both the NFL and the NCAA can benefit from this draft rule. Since the NCAA does not pay its players (a subject for another day), they need guys like Lawrence to make money. Hardcore college football fans with serious rooting interests put their team colors first, but that doesn't mean they don't root for the players in those colors as well. Clemson is a big university with a big fanbase, but Lawrence only helps the Tigers brand grow by playing like he did last night. Where he helps even more though, is by bringing in the casual fan like myself and many others who watched the game last night.
I don't root for a specific college football team, but I do watch the sport, and stars like Lawrence are attractions that are more likely to make any causal fan spend money that eventually makes its way to the NCAA. Because Lawrence has no choice but to play in college for another two years, the NCAA can use his face to generate a whole lot of revenue and give him none of it. It seems pretty unfair, but until the draft rules change, that isn't going to change.
On the other hand, while the NFL wouldn't admit it, what we really watched last night was the championship game of their minor leagues. If you want to play in the NFL, you basically have only one option to get there, and that is by playing college football. So college football in that sense is like minor league football. Baseball players and hockey players get drafted and go through minor league systems before being called up to their professional teams. For the NFL, those minor league teams are really Clemson, Alabama, and all of the other college football teams throughout the country.
The difference between the Clemson Tigers and the Reno Aces or Hartford Wolfpack though, is Clemson plays on national television in front of the country, while Reno and Hartford play in places no one even knows. So before Lawrence ever even steps foot on to an NFL field, his face is going to be familiar. It's why the NFL Draft has become a prime time television event. We know the names and faces of most of the guys before they are even on professional rosters.
The Giants were able to sell Saquon Barkley jerseys for $75 each before he had ever even played a game because the nation knew him from Penn State. The Detroit Tigers selected Casey Mize first overall this past year in the MLB Draft, and I guarantee you that he could walk through Detroit and not even be recognized, so there is no way the Tigers could sell his jersey for $75 because he isn't playing college baseball on national television. These football rookies are making millions of dollars for the NFL before even playing a single game.
That is why this rule preventing guys like Lawrence from turning pro until three years after high school is beneficial to everyone but the player. If he plays at this level for two more seasons, Clemson fans will continue to spend money to watch him, and the NFL will get a money-making star before he ever puts on a helmet. If his play declines, or even worse, if he gets hurt between now and the 2021 draft, then the NCAA will be on the hook for zero money since he wasn't getting paid to begin with, and the NFL will probably have plenty of other quarterbacks who can replace him and make them money, and they won't have paid him a penny either.
Just because this rule has been in place for many years now does not make it fair for everyone involved. The NFL has hidden under the guise of their sport being too violent for 19 and 20 year old kids and honestly, we have all just accepted it.
What Lawrence did last night was pretty close to unprecedented. I think that most NFL fans would agree that two of the biggest "guaranteed" superstar quarterbacks coming out of college were John Elway and Peyton Manning. When Elway was 19 years old, he was a freshman at Stanford who was probably closer to playing professional baseball than professional football.
When Manning was 19, he actually led the Tennessee Volunteers to the third overall ranking in the country and came in sixth in Heisman Trophy balloting. His career obviously did ascend from there, but if he could have entered the draft after that season, maybe he would have at least considered it. The first quarterback taken in the draft the following season was Tony Banks, and Manning certainly had a better career than Banks, so why shouldn't he have been able to turn pro then? With a quarterback starved class like the one in 1996, he could have started earning a paycheck a few years earlier than he actually did.
Elway and Manning are two of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game. At 19 years old, neither of them had accomplished anything close to what Lawrence just accomplished last night. Beating Alabama by four touchdowns to win the national title is literally probably as good as it can get for a 19 year old quarterback. Because he is a football player though, he is going to be exploited for two more years.
Some young basketball players have counteracted the one-and-done college rule by going overseas and playing professionally in other countries. It isn't ideal, but it at least does allow them to earn money playing the sport they will eventually try to turn into a career. In football, that isn't the case though. There are some American football leagues overseas, but the competition is nothing close to NCAA football. Therefore, Lawrence really has no option other than playing for Clemson for two more seasons.
Other quarterbacks like Tua Tagavailoa and Jake Fromm have to deal with the same thing. Tagavailoa won a national championship last year, and Fromm had a great season this year. Just like Lawrence though, they will have to wait to be drafted.
Maurice Clarett did attempt to challenge this rule years ago, and it seemed like he might have a case, but legal problems and a decline in his play on the field really didn't give him a chance. Lawrence might be a new case with a better chance to win an appeal of this, but he has not given any indication that he would even think about doing that, and no one else I know of has given it any thought either.
Unfortunately, it seems like the players have just accepted the rules as they currently stand, just like fans have. If Lawrence's play declines over the course of the next two seasons, then even if he did try to take legal action against the NFL, he would have much less leverage than he does right now. If he were to get injured between now and 2021, the NFL could just toss him aside like they do with so many other injured players, and we would forget about him.
A 6'6" kid with NFL talent should make teams in need of a quarterback salivate. And watching him play last night, I'm sure that NFL GM's and coaches were doing just that. I know as a Giants fan, I certainly was. Some of the quarterbacks coming out of school this year seem pretty good, but the ones I like the most all have to go back to school just because the NFL says so. They know kids will be lining up year after year to play in their league, so the more anticipation we have, the better it is for them. At the same time, Lawrence's situation greatly benefits the NCAA because they have two more years to make millions of dollars off him and not have to sign one paycheck for him.
When two groups as powerful as them both benefit from the same thing, then why would they ever consider changing it? The answer is, they just won't. The only thing that might change this is a superstar player turning to the legal system to challenge it. As it stands now though, I cannot see that happening any time soon.
At this point, I think Lawrence is much more likely to focus on Clemson defending their title in his sophomore year, and with all of the celebrations going on in South Carolina right now, he is probably already behind schedule, because I can guarantee you that Nick Saban is already on the recruiting trail and drawing up plays for next season in order to prevent Clemson from embarrassing them again.
I can also guarantee you that the NCAA is thrilled because they know Lawrence is going to put a whole bunch of money in their pockets for the next two seasons. And the NFL is thrilled as well because after the NCAA loses him, that money will start going into their pockets. The 19 year old kid here is not going to earn a dime, but the people around him who already have plenty of money are just going to have to find somewhere else to put the boatloads of cash Lawrence is going to make for them. It sure isn't fair, but as we stand today, we all seem content to let it happen as long as we can get exciting football games because of it.
Daily Giants Update: Dwayne Haskins is officially entering the draft, and it appears that the Giants do have him on their radar with the sixth pick. Barring a trade, he will most likely be available when the Giants pick too. I do like some of the younger quarterbacks more than him, but he certainly does have the talent to be an NFL quarterback. I still don't really have a feel for what the team is going to do in the draft, and I'm not sure they even do because we are still months away from that. Until then though, we will have a million mock drafts to discuss before draft day. Once that day does actually come, one team will make some crazy trade or unpredictable pick and all of the mock drafts we spent months analyzing will be completely wrong. So basically, I have no idea what the Giants are going to do. At this point, all I do know is that Haskins might be available for them. Or he might not.
Daily Rangers Update: The Rangers are in the process of losing yet another game right now in Las Vegas, as the poor stretch they have been on looks bound to continue.
Daily NBA Update: Houston beat Denver in a showdown of two of the top teams in the Western Conference, and Giannis had another big night in a year that I think could be his first legitimate chance to win league MVP.
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