MAURICE CLARETT JOINS THE BLOGOSPHERE

Whether you’re an Ohio State fan or not, one of the saddest stories of the past few years was the unparalleled demise of running back Maurice Clarett. After bursting on the scene and leading the Buckeyes to a national championship as a true freshman, everything that happened after that was a case study in poor decision making and squandered talent.Clarett, now incarcerated in and Ohio state penitentiary for at least three-plus years after a hold-up and highway chase in Columbus, has taken to blogging to express himself.According to the Columbus Dispatch, since inmates have limited internet access, Clarett calls his blog entries to family members who post them for him. Reenrolled in college, now at Ohio University (they are the only state college that offers classes for the incarcerated), Clarett does a great job of articulating himself, and hopefully will leave prison a changed person. Here’s a short snippet of a post from last week:"I had a chance to sit down and speak to a young man who is 18 with a 13 year sentence. He has been in the same cell block as me for a few months and I’ve been observing how he has been coping with his sentence. It has been on my mind to sit with him and offer some suggestions on how he could reverse the order and start taking advantage of this solitude but I always came up with the excuse that I didn’t have the time. The truth was I didn’t want to make the time. I then thought, “What if all the people supporting me made the excuse, they didn’t have time?” I probably wouldn’t be where I am at mentally today."Clarett hopes to start a career in public speaking after he is released, with hopes of reaching others before they make the kind of choices he made.(Editor’s note: The story has been amended to address a mistake in the computer and internet policy of the penitentiary. Thanks to the reader who alerted us to the mistake.)