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Matt Leinart's $12 million senior year
05/03/06
by Clay

Every college kid in America who is wasting their parent’s money by failing to graduate from college can thank Matt Leinart for having the most expensive year of college in American history. Everything short of Leinart’s year is a bona fide bargain. That’s because according to rough ClayNation math, Leinart’s senior year at USC cost him about $12 million in guaranteed money (the difference between being the overall No. 1 pick last year and No. 10 this year).

No matter what your parents say about what a waste of money you are, you can always respond, "Yeah, but Matt Leinart spent $12 million on his senior year and when he came out of college he still made $12 million. So there." This will be a really mature argument when your degree in hospitality management finally comes through. For good measure, make sure you slam the door and make a whiny face.

Leinart and Taitusi Lutui ponder Leinart's $12 M helmet.

And really, when you break that number down further, since Leinart only took ballroom dancing last fall, that’s in the neighborhood of $3 million for the foxtrot, $3 million for the waltz, $3 million for the cha-cha and $3 million for West Coast swing. (For comparison’s sake, at the same time Leinart was enrolled in ballroom dancing, my wife enrolled me in salsa classes. My masculinity still hasn’t recovered, but the entire class only cost $79. For all that money, if Matt Leinart enters Cardinals Stadium and still dances like Ray Lewis when he steps foot on to M&T Bank Stadium, USC's ballroom dancing teacher should be shot.

But what does $12 million in lost money really mean to all of us here at ClayNation? It’s important to put that loss into the appropriate context. Here are some things Leinart could have bought with the $12 million he effectively spent on his senior year:

* Brand new, state-of-the-art floating beer pong tables for every fraternity in America.

* Paris Hilton for an entire year.

* 48 million cans of Natty Lite.

Plus we'll throw in the girl for free!

* 168,321 fawning ClayNation columns

* 1,091,901 DVD copies of Bring it On

* The bad half of Tiger Woods’ yacht. (Note: The good half features Elin Nordegren or her twin, Josephin, sun-tanning in bikinis).

Fortunately the bad half features the ship's controls

* A 2,000-square-foot apartment in Times Square. Ouch, money really doesn’t last long in Manhattan.

Speaking of New York City, what do players gain by agreeing to appear in person at the NFL Draft? I get the feeling it’s nothing more than a free trip to the city and an opportunity to meet Paul Tagliabue. This is an incentive that should work on someone like me, not an individual who is about to become a multi-millionaire. After all, I’m still at that stage of life where if you give me a free plane ticket to anywhere, I’ll go. Beirut? I hear it’s beautiful in the spring. Bangalore? I love the thrill of not knowing whether I am actually going east or west. Do the player’s sponsors make them go for the added exposure? If not, why does anyone go?

That’s because each years' telecast inevitably focuses on the last player to be picked and the commentators shed alligator tears to have something to talk about other than asking rhetorical questions of one another like, "What’s the story so far of this draft?" Excuse me, the story? I think the story is the same as it is every year: People get picked to play for football teams. The NFL Draft is not James Joyce’s Ulysses -- I don’t think we need CliffsNotes. It’s pretty insulting the commentators think their television audience is so stupid they can’t keep up with this thing and need "story updates," especially with a television screen already filled with enough information to remake the Iraqi constitution, stop Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons and still know George W. Bush’s 40 time within .1 seconds.

But as the draft continued, lo and behold, Leinart wasn’t getting picked and so he became the "story" of the draft. Perhaps, ultimately this was Leinart’s final revenge as he managed to engender an emotion in America never associated with him in the past: Sympathy. Well, at least for some people. We here at ClayNation were more interested in the things Leinart might have been thinking as he waited for his name to be called. Here are 12:

* I’m Matt Leinart. Don’t you people get that? I’m Matt fucking Leinart.

* Do the names Paris Hilton, Kristen Cavalleri and Alyssa Milano mean nothing to you at all?

* I was at Nick Lachey’s 30th birthday party when you guys were scouting seventh-round draft hopefuls at Boise State.

* The blue suit was a nice choice. I look good in blue. Scratch that, great in blue. (For the record, my wife claims Leinart's suit was gray, but I subscribe to ClayNation Canon No. 421: "If after 10 seconds of consideration you can’t tell what color any article of clothing truly is, then the answer is always blue.")

* Vince Young can’t even spell "guaranteed money."

* I think Suzy Kolber would have sex with me.

She'd better wear a different bra in my sexual fantasy

* Are they still going to give me the suite at the Palms every time I visit?

* At least I’m not LenDale White.

* It’s not a coincidence if Melissa Stark comes back to cover football this fall.

* A.J. Hawk’s neck is bigger than my chest. There’s no way he’s getting a guest-spot on Entourage.

* How in the world did Under Armour not think I had enough street cred to be in their new television commercial? Click, clack, please. Have they seen me when I don’t get immediately ushered into the Key Club? Once, I got so mad I ripped a feather-pillow to pieces and feathers went everywhere.

* I think Mel Kiper, Jr. would have sex with me.

This is a look of desperation if I've ever seen one.
Stop looking at me like that, Mel.
Seriously.

By the way, if Leinart actually thought of two or more of these things, then we will anoint him ClayNation’s new favorite NFL player to reign alongside our favorite basketball player, Joakim Noah and our two favorite announcers, Ian Eagle and Verne Lundquist. As you can see, the ClayNation Crew is laced with street cred. Any day now I’m expecting Under Armour to feature this foursome in a new advertising slogan: "Click Clack ... that’s the sound of Verne Lundquist’s pacemaker."

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