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ESPN.com - COLUMNIST - Wojciechowski: Two backs, two cautionary tales: "Common lives, plenty of questions for Vick, Clarett
Wojciechowski
By Gene Wojciechowski
ESPN.com
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The convenient reaction is to call Marcus Vick and Maurice Clarett thugs. Or punks. Or ungrateful, numb-from-the-neck-up crazies who co-authored the book, 'How To Screw Up Your Life Before Your 23rd Birthday.'

They had everything. They have nothing. Cautionary tales, right?

Call it coincidence, fate, sad destiny … whatever … but Vick and Clarett have more in common than recent photo sessions with police mug shot cameras. They share a childhood, a confusion, a confluence of circumstances that should give you pause before dismissing them as knuckleheads who deserve whatever bed they've short-sheeted.

In 2002, both were college freshmen in their home states: Vick at Virginia Tech, where he was expected to continue the legacy established by his famous brother, Michael; Clarett at Ohio State, where the Buckeyes soon would name him the first true OSU freshman to start at running back since 1943. No pressure there.

Vick grew up in a part of Newport News, Va., that was harder than the back of your father's hand. Visitors drove through quickly and with their car doors locked. That explains why Michael later used some of his Nike and Atlanta Falcons money to buy his mother a brand-new house in upscale Suffolk.

Clarett lived with his two brothers and 11 cousins at his grandmother's house in a Youngstown, Ohio, 'neighborhood' -- if you can call a ghetto a neighborhood -- where the sound of gunshots was commonplace. He ate pork and beans for dinner, a couple of folded slices of bologna (no bread) for lunch. By the time he enrolled at Ohio State, Clarett had attended the funerals of 10 friends, seen two people shot and killed in front of his grandma's house, and served three stints in a juvenile detention center.

I still have the blue no"