About a year ago today, amid the ear-splitting backdrop of cars racing around Charlotte Motor Speedway, I was asking some of Clemson's underclassmen if they were considering leaving early for the NFL.
Jamie Harper wasn't atop my list or even close to it, but I decided to ask him anyway shortly after he climbed out of the passenger seat of a really fast car as the team participated in a function before the Meineke Car Care Bowl.
To my surprise, Harper indicated he was leaning toward skipping his senior season.
“I might take my chances with the player lockout and stuff,” Harper said, referring to the current NFL labor strife. “I love Clemson. I could come back here and try and get it done next year. But leaving is a possibility.”
Harper's thought process was apparently news to Dabo Swinney, who told me a few minutes later that going early would be a big mistake on Harper's part.
“They love backs like him, but he wouldn’t be a high draft pick at all,” he said. “He’d make a team. The guy is a 240-pound guy. He can dunk the ball through his legs. He’s a tough kid, smart. He’ll have a chance to play. But I don’t advise anybody to go unless they’re a high pick. ... He can go now, but he would just be going at a discount."
A few weeks later, Harper was gone. And the feeling was that mega-agent Drew Rosenhaus sweet-talked him with visions of NFL teams falling in love with his speed and athleticism and taking him in the first or second round.
Harper was a fourth-round selection of the Tennessee Titans. Other than some impressive moments during the preseason as he received playing time during Chris Johnson's holdout, Harper hasn't done much during his rookie season.
He has 13 carries for 25 yards and three catches for 28 yards.
Did Harper make a mistake? One could make the case, and certainly Swinney would argue that his assessment from a year ago has been proved correct. Harper could've been quite the passing-game weapon under Chad Morris, and no doubt he'd have had opportunities for carries this season with Andre Ellington clanged up and Mike Bellamy struggling to grasp the system.
But for those of us on the outside who didn't know much about Harper's personal situation, it's hard to judge. We spoke with draft authority Mike Detillier a few days ago for stories that are running on this year's Clemson draft hopefuls, and he said there are a lot of variables in cases such as Harper's.
"For a lot of these kids, even getting picked in the second and third round is a lot of money," he said. "I've never been critical of a young man for coming out early if he knows where he's going to get picked. A lot of times, I think agents and people around them convince them they're going to be earlier-round draft choices than they are and it ends up backfiring on them.
"But in today's world, there's a lot of these young men who are kind of the breadwinners of the family. They've got a lot on their plate, and there is some economic difficulty across the country. And you know as well as I do that a lot of these guys are going to school to play ball. That's a lot of money to turn aside."
That said, it's doubtful Harper would've said adios to the Tigers had he known he'd been a fourth-round selection.
It's a lesson underclassmen at Clemson and elsewhere can and should use to their advantage.
LW
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