YOU'RE LUCKY MORRIS CLAIBORNE EVEN TOOK THE WONDERLIC FOR YOU BASTARDS

You're welcome for the five year old pop culture reference. My 15th podcast of the year with Cousin Sal will be out on Thursday. Anyways, some goon from Foxsports.com is not happy that Claiborne's dreadful Wonderlic score got leaked. Now, is his obvious inability to answer basic logic and math questions under timed conditions the most hilarious thing of all time? No, monkeys dressed as astronauts are. But is it worth a little bit of snark? Of course. When the test creators supposedly say you need to get a 10 to be classified as illiterate, a 4 is... well, it's not good. The guy doesn't deserve to be excoriated for it but I think the situation is worth a few chuckles, especially since 1) he's probably already a professional athlete, given that he goes to LSU, IF YOU GET MY DRIFT, and 2) he's about to be a top 10 draft pick. But Foxsports dude doesn't agree with that sentiment. Boy does he ever not.

(FWIW, I don't really buy this below 10 = illiterate thing, unless there are somehow a decent number of questions on the exam that don't include any words. I guess you could say that someone guessing all As or all Bs or whatever can get a 10, and Claiborne couldn't meet that, but let's cut the guy some slack, I'm sure he can read. LITERALLY.)

Anyways, let's the mitigating information out of the way first.

[Claiborne] also has a learning disability.

According to Greg Gabriel at the National Football Post, Claiborne’s disability — though not specified— isn’t a secret around the league. When he was recruited out of high school, it was made clear to the various big-time college programs courting him that he’d need academic advisors and assistance in the classroom once he selected a school.

Fortunately he chose a school that doesn't require athletes to visit places like classrooms and advisors' offices. Although more power to him if he chose to do so.

After deciding to attend LSU, Claiborne didn’t fade away and let the rigors of the college environment swallow him whole. He worked with tutors and utilized LSU’s various on-campus learning resources to get the grades he needed to stay academically eligible and compete.

So there you go. Good on him. He's got a disability, he works with it, he's tried hard to be a good student. Still, he got like the lowest Wonderlic score ever. Ever. Even Vince Young out-tested this guy. So with all the background bullshit out of the way let's get to the Chris Crocker stuff.

The real issue is that the report was even leaked at all. Whether true or false, it’s a nefarious act

Whoa. Ease up, 1860s newspaper writer describing the Lincoln assassination.

from an individual or individuals who clearly have some incentives to damage a young man.

Or an individual or individuals who are just being low-level jerks by relaying a part sad/part hilarious piece of information to the public.

Did the score come from a team that wants to draft Claiborne and thought the information would stray another team away from doing so?

Could've.

Or was it from an agent trying to better position his own client, potentially a top cornerback, himself?

Also could've. Do we want to stick with "nefarious?" Are "dastardly" or "opprobrious" still available?

You’ll drive yourself crazy playing Andy Sipowicz trying to figure that one out.

If it's one of those two things, which seems plausible if not likely, it's a little shady but not surprising given the stakes of the draft. And definitely not worth shitting your shorts over.

But we should know.

We should have the name of the tough guy

I doubt this person thinks they're tough. They probably think they're a hilarious troll.

who went public with information that’s supposed to be highly confidential.

HE SHOULD BE MADE TO FACE JUSTICE FOR HIS NON-CRIME

The NFL conducts these tests in what are described as highly secure environments.

Read: some emptied-out equipment room in Lucas Oil Stadium with a few folding tables set up.

The results are not intended to be leaked. And yet, here we are today, and Claiborne’s woeful Wonderlic is the biggest football headline of the day.

And yet, the Earth continues to spin on its axis while rotating the sun.

The truth is, Claiborne’s score won’t impact his draft stock in April. I assure you that he’ll be the first cornerback taken in the draft, regardless of how he performed with a No. 2 pencil in Indy.

I misrepresented things when I said this guy was acting like Chris Crocker- he's acting half like Chris Crocker and half like Claiborne's mom.

He’ll get over it. He’ll use it as motivation. He’ll come out angry and he’ll have a fine NFL career. This will all be forgotten and five years from now, the same message board commenters that were mocking him today will be wearing his jersey and selling his game-used mouth guard on eBay.

Probably not.

But the slime that sheepishly — and worse off, anonymously — shared his score with a media outlet will never have to deal with it.

Holy shit, who cares? I bet Claiborne doesn't. (Earlier in the article there is a paragraph about how Claiborne defended himself on Twitter in a calm, humorous, and light hearted fashion.) I know I certainly don't.

He’ll continue to sit on his computer

I BET HE'S ONE OF THOSE COMPUTER PEOPLE WHO LIKES COMPUTERS! THIS IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF SHENANIGANS THEY PULL!

behind a desk and just know that he made a good kid feel bad today.

He's about to get like $10MM in guaranteed money. I think he's OK with things, especially if his disability is known throughout the league already.

He’ll know that he leaked a kid with a learning disability’s standardized test score to the world without providing any of the context that should have gone along with it.

HOW DARE HE NOT ALSO MENTION ALL THE THINGS THAT HAVE EVER GONE WRONG FOR CLAIBORNE TOO, LIKE THE FACT THAT HE WAS FEELING KIND OF GASSY DURING THE TEST AND THAT HE WAS BUMMED OUT AT THE COMBINE BECAUSE HE LOST HIS CELL PHONE THE WEEKEND BEFORE?

He’ll sleep fine and likely won’t have to face any repercussions.

But I wish he would.

We got it, thanks.

Roger Goodell’s all about security and the purity of the game. His stance on Bountygate was aggressive and firm. If the NFL is going to ask its draft prospects to take an exam under the assumption that the results won’t be made public, they should honor that agreement. Otherwise, why would any of these kids even bother?

That's great stuff. I'd do the multiple copy and paste thing but I'm tired and it's late. But just to summarize: league office's harsh stance on players allegedly trying to injure other players means league is hypocritical if it doesn't do a better job of safeguarding written test scores. Spectacular. I hope more shitty football writers try to lump anything that goes slightly wrong in the NFL this season into the bounty scandal. "Sure the league PRETENDS to care about safety when Brett Favre's ankles are involved, but where is the justice for Chargers fan Bob Q. Smith, who had half a beer dumped on him while watching his team play in Oakland? IT AIN'T RIGHT."

Morris Claiborne could have walked out of that room and said, “I’ll be a top-10 pick regardless of what I score on this. What’s the point?” Hell, if his score’s going to be discussed on SportsCenter three weeks before the draft, he should have done that.

What? What are we talking about?

If you’re going to hold these kids responsible and ask them to honor their end of the pre-draft process, you should hold all parties responsible for it, too.

Including people who circumvented what was likely a lax security process and made a day's worth of headlines by leaking an awesome player's abominable score!

Maybe I’m getting too worked up over this.

No, I think you're pretty much being rational and measured about it. Sincerely, people who bitch endlessly about instant replay in MLB.