Quarterback Jimmy Clausen will arrive at Notre Dame next year amid big expectations from fans — and himself — but don’t judge him on a first impression
By Brian Hamilton Tribune staff reporter July 22, 2006, 6:08 PM CDT
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com
fficeffice" /><o></o> http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/notredame/cs-060722clausen,1,4540641.story?page=1&coll=cs-home-headlines
<o
></o> WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. -- Notice the hair, first of all. Not mowed down to the scalp, as if readied for basic training, but short, inconspicuous, gilded fuzz framing a deeply tanned face. It does not sway in the westerly breeze skimming the practice fields at Oaks Christian High School as autos whoosh by on California Highway 101 below.
The hair is not apt to stand out. Nor, surely, stand up. You would remember that. You would get a picture in your head—a kid with surfer-blond locks shellacked into spikes, in a dashing suit, three championship rings gleaming off one hand—and you would get ideas. Make assumptions. You would think you know all you need to know about that kid, from one look.<o
></o>So the brief trek to Sean Wiser's house on Whitman Court occurs a little more often now. Out come the clippers and Sean goes to work, paring away.
It's a small thing. But the hair was long that April day in South Bend, Ind., when he made an oral commitment to play football for Notre Dame.
Now Jimmy Clausen gets his hair cut a little more often. It's a small thing, but he wouldn't want you to get the wrong impression.
And too many people have the wrong impression.
Warped perceptions
"You ready to go?" Jimmy Clausen asks his visitor.
Twilight spreads through the Santa Monica Mountains that flank Oaks Christian. An evening of 7-on-7 passing-league football has concluded after nearly three mind-numbing hours. Now the consensus No. 1 high school player in the country is eager to ride to dinner with someone he met maybe five minutes earlier.
With Jimmy Clausen, there is suspicion of a vacuum-packed personality, but it fades.
After all, it is difficult to reconcile a mellow teenager with the quarterback who declares his intentions to lead Notre Dame to national championships, who is listed in one friend's cell phone as "LeBron." (Sarcastically, it is necessary to add.)
He is the photogenic youngest brother of Tennessee quarterbacks Casey and Rick, a prodigy with a quarterback coach since 6th grade, 27-0 as a high school starter. His school will install 1,000 temporary stadium seats this season, specifically for Notre Dame fans. The cost is about $36,000, according to Oaks Christian coach Bill Redell.
In the petri dish of recruiting Web sites and celebrity-obsessed culture, all that mutates into overheated expectations and warped perceptions.
"Some people know the person I am," Clausen says. "A lot of people just know of me, because of football, but really don't know who I am in everything else. It's good and bad sometimes. Some people make accusations, and they think they know what they're talking about, but they really don't.
"You're always going to get that. I just have to deal with it. It comes in one ear and goes out the other. So it's not that bad."
And yet it can be. He awoke with a smile at 6 a.m. on the day he announced his Notre Dame decision—and then faced a stinging backlash for staging a news conference at the College Football Hall of Fame. Months later, Clausen looks like he would rather chew a bag of nails than discuss it.
He calls his brothers to recount the inventive jeers opposing fans fired at him. Whispers flutter everywhere at road games. There are three myspace.com sites in his name, none of which he created.
Jimmy Clausen doesn't like talking about himself. Maybe because no one can hear him.
A certain smile
"When we're hanging out," Oaks Christian teammate Chris Potter says, "you'd never guess he was the kid who was all over ESPN because he doesn't take that with him."<o
></o>So those who know Jimmy Clausen begin to talk. And they say the keys will disappear. One foot out the door, and the car keys have vanished into the ether. Or sometimes shoes. Or, in one particularly brazen case, a helmet. Minutes before a state championship game.
Television channels change without permission. Mention a girl you have no interest in and, unfailingly, she is staggered in the hallway by an ear-splitting proclamation of your unrequited love.<o
></o>Parents hear about college decisions made without their input, and only after Mom is whipped into an entertaining dither does the truth, or lack thereof, come out.
All of it traceable to an impish grin.
"He's just doing it to get a rise out of you," Rick Clausen says of his little brother. "It works most of the time."
"It's so weird," says teammate Jason Salter, who has known Clausen since middle school. "You hear all this stuff about him, and then you see him off the field, and it's just like: 'That's Jimmy?'"
To friends, he is The Chosen One, The Golden Domer, LeBron. Whatever airy sobriquet last appeared in print, applied ironically.
"We don't have to, though," Oaks Christian teammate Brad Freeman says. "There are no levels; there's no, 'I'm better than you.'"
Attention, though, can create a split personality where one doesn't exist. Swaggering, stone-faced, calculatingly rehearsed Jimmy Clausen? A phantom.
We know this because that Jimmy Clausen doesn't play Guitar Hero.
It is a video game, bordering on a pandemic. Players hit colored buttons on a guitar-shaped controller that correspond to on-screen signals, they attempt to "play" everything from "Hey Joe" to "More Than a Feeling." Guitar Hero made its debut at a cousin's house, dominated a vacation at Bass Lake and now consumes summer nights.
"It doesn't sound good, but it's real fun," Clausen says. "Once you get into it, you sort of get addicted to it. I'm not bad. I just bought it last week. [Potter] plays the guitar, but I'm better than him. I think I have better hand-eye coordination."
Clausen is not all id, all the time. He treats his offensive line to dinner. Oaks Christian's principal recently wrote Clausen a letter commending him for spending time with middle school students. Clausen advised Wiser on his game films for colleges, calmly counseled a freaked-out Potter on his first television appearance years ago and even let star tailback Marc Tyler off the hook when he chose Southern California.
The two are near-brothers, ever since Clausen treated Tyler to Quizno's the first time they met. Tyler spends weeknights with the Clausens to eliminate an arduous commute home to Lancaster, Calif., after tutoring, and he called Clausen about his decision before he told the Trojans' staff.
Even with the letdown, Clausen emphasized to Tyler what people told him: Do right by yourself. Though he did note the consequences at their next practice.
"You can go to SC," Clausen told Tyler. "We're just going to beat you all four years."
The right place
To fill out this picture with vivid, high-definition color, watch Casey Clausen start down a Black Diamond snowboard run at Mammoth Mountain. Then see him look back. A sprightly figure glides down the snow pack. Jimmy Clausen, a decade behind in age but ages ahead in gusto, follows big brother down the mountain.
"You could tell at a young age," Casey says, "this kid was something different."
Then watch on April 25, 2004, Jimmy Clausen along again, this time for a climb. Casey awaits the NFL draft. Though the league is his dream, that day hopes are tempered. Second-day pick, maybe late fourth round.<o
></o>Selections come and go. The day ends without a call. On the couch, the older brother turns to ensure his younger brother does not follow down this mountain.
"This is not going to happen to you," Casey says.<o
></o>"This is not going to happen to me," Jimmy replies.
"He worked and he tried his best to get there, and it didn't work out," Jimmy Clausen says. "I'm going to do everything I can to get there. That was his goal and dream in life, to play in the NFL, and he really didn't get that chance. I'm going to do everything I can to get that chance."
Thus Clausen has trained with quarterback guru Steve Clarkson for six years, at times alongside the likes of Arizona Cardinals top draft pick Matt Leinart of USC and the Pittsburgh Steelers' Ben Roethlisberger. He watches film at home, keeps his receivers after in-season practices to run routes. His summer days brim over, workouts with Clarkson or a strength coach and then at Oaks Christian.
In January, Notre Dame and Charlie Weis will cradle this Faberge career. In his first meeting with Weis, Clausen made it plain: He intends to be the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft.
"Look at everything [Clausen] has," says Jeremy Crabtree, a rivals.com national recruiting analyst. "He's all of 6 feet 3 inches, a rock-solid 200 pounds, he does about every throw you need, he makes great decisions. What makes it even better for him is he's going to a place where the coach is known for taking good quarterbacks and making them great. He couldn't have picked a better situation."
Then again, the pressure will be unlike anything in South Bend since Ron Powlus practically was canonized before his first snap. And Clausen will compete with Zach Fraser and Morgan Park's Demetrius Jones, two well-regarded prospects entering their freshman seasons this fall.
The difference, you suspect, is their views of the mountain.
"I approach it the one way I know, which is to go all-out," Clausen says. "I'll do everything I can to help Notre Dame win national championships. If that's not good enough for some people, then that's not good enough for them. I have real high expectations for myself, and I think they're higher than anyone out there who has expectations for me."
Disarming charm
Only a few minutes remain in the 7-on-7 games and Jimmy Clausen cackles in a back corner of the field. Charisma Carmichael, the 7-year-old daughter of assistant coach Kevin Carmichael, has let her little brother, Kevin Jr., tackle her. But she teases him anyway, and little Kevin pounces, each hand clasping a tuft of his sister's hair.
Clausen's torso bends back with the laughter and he jumps in place, scissor-kicking his legs. Marc Tyler and Sean Wiser are doubled over too. But Clausen seems entirely disarmed, defenses deactivated, like he relates—a kid thrilled by the mischief in others.
Later, Oaks Christian parents and teammates and coaches gather at the Wood Ranch Bar-B-Que&Grill for dinner. Outside, Clausen chews sunflower seeds and talks, mostly about himself. Restlessly pumping knees confirm it is not his favorite subject.
A stringy kid in a black shirt approaches warily, like he's entering a grizzly-bear habitat.
"Excuse me," he says, "but are you Jimmy Clausen?"
It happens all the time. It has happened near the In-N-Out Burger close to school, girls yelling from their car to his. It happened five hours away at a burger joint near Bass Lake. Once more, Clausen—loath to be impolite—is stuck between a stalk and a hard place.
"Yeah," Clausen answers.
The visitor asks for a photo. Clausen obliges, sits down again. The visitor isn't finished.
"So can I ask you a question?" he says. "Why didn't you consider Ohio State?"
Patiently, if not extensively, Clausen answers, alluding to lukewarm mutual interest. The satisfied visitor offers thanks and returns to his company. Another stranger glimpses Jimmy Clausen and arrives at a conclusion from one look. He won't be the last.
