There was a fringe benefit of playing for LSU coach Nick Saban, something valuable to a couple of his players in addition to winning games and getting trained for the NFL. The coach had a pond with fish and he seemed much too busy to snatch those fish out of the water himself. So Mike Clayton, an LSU wide receiver, and Marcus Spears, an LSU defensive end, would make their way around the back of Saban's big house on Highland Road in Baton Rouge and drop lines into the coach's pond and fish. ...
Clayton was from south Baton Rouge and Spears was from the Bottom, a poorer area of Baton Rouge, and the idea of fishing at the manor of an LSU coach seemed so preposterous if you understood the history between south Baton Rouge, the Bottom, and LSU. Clayton and Spears would never have fished in the pond of an LSU football coach before 2000. Peed in it? Yes, they would have done that.
LSU was mistrusted in some parts of town. The football coach represented a hierarchy at LSU that did not blend with south Baton Rouge, Clayton said. The coaches were not racist, but their hands seemed tied by politics. Was it accurate? Were there politics? It doesn't matter. That's the way the Claytons ... saw it and that's what mattered.
When LSU coach Gerry DiNardo, who was regarded as a skilled recruiter, did not show any interest in recruiting Mike Clayton, a star WR from south Baton Rouge, the rift between the neighborhood and the LSU campus grew wider. The Claytons had issues with the politics at LSU, which is to say they thought a good-old-boy element still lurked there when Mike was met with a cold shoulder by DiNardo. If Florida State and Bobby Bowden could recruit him hard, why couldn't his hometown school? The Claytons thought the worst of LSU. When DiNardo was fired and Saban was hired in late November 1999, LSU began to recruit Clayton, but Saban started the chase from a hole. The hardest thing was not getting in the front door; it was getting through the barbed wire of emotions. Clayton lived in a nice neighborhood with manicured yards, modest but neatly kept homes. What the heck was so objectionable in this neighborhood that it took LSU so long to get in line and recruit a star?
Clayton, who attended Christian Life Academy, already had his bag half packed for Florida State. The heck with LSU. The kids from the Bottom or south Baton Rouge never thought they got a fair shake at LSU, so they were always looking elsewhere first, Clayton said.
"I never got one letter until Saban and his staff got on campus," Clayton said. "Jimbo [Fisher] would come watch me play basketball, and I would show off for him."
The Claytons let Saban in the front door. "The neighborhood was going, 'What are you doing talkin' to LSU? You know how things can go there,'" Clayton said. "A lot of guys just went to Alcorn, or one of the other HBCUs. We saw too many of our guys go to LSU and then transfer."
Saban, who was in his first season as head coach at LSU, made his pitch to the Claytons. He was earnest, like a man selling Bibles out of the trunk of his car. He talked about college being a forty-year decision, not a four-year decision. He talked about life after football. You could go to your hometown school and come back after the NFL and own shares in a bank, own a clothing store, own real estate. There would be roots.
When the coach was finished vending LSU, Milton Clayton, Mike's father, tried to put his feelings in a gentlemanly sort of way to Saban: "There are politics at LSU, Coach. Things go on. Sometimes the best players don't play."
"There will be no politics," Saban said. "Not as long as I'm here."
Well, how many coaches had said that before only to let politics creep into the locker room, into the meeting room, into the coach's ear? A kid from the South Baton Rouge Rams, among the elite of the Pop Warner football programs, was just asking to be trashed if he believed this blather.
"Don't be sorry, Mike," some of the neighbors told him. "Go to Florida State, go to Miami, go anyplace but there." Years of mistrust were barking back at Clayton, and perceptions are hard to tear down. LSU had been one of the last SEC schools to embrace black players. The Claytons were not indicting the whole campus, but they were suspicious, as black folks have learned with justification to be suspicious.
Many LSU fans will likely scoff at Clayton's assertion that as late as 2000 racial prejudices affected the makeup of the Tigers' rosters. Clayton scoffs back a those who think sports is color-blind and that winning overrides all racism.
"Just the other day I'm on the golf course in Tampa, and this white guy rolls by in his cart and says to his friend, 'Hey, look at that nigger playing golf,'" Clayton said. "That's the day we still live in. Some people look at color. It's still not gone." ...
Clayton scratched Miami off his recruiting list because on his visit there with Spears ..., they found South Beach too raucous and too tempting. "All kinds of stuff was going on there," Clayton said."
There was still time to decide before the February 8 signing date, but Clayton thought maybe he should give Saban a chance. Clayton liked Saban, the son of a gasoline-station operator from West Virginia. Florida State was still Clayton's top choice, but a window had opened for LSU, or was it a hole opening in a fence that had been built up between a neighborhood and a school?
On the night of December 29, 2000, Clayton and Spears ... were sitting in a restaurant in Dallas before they were to play in a high school all-American game. On the restaurant's television, LSU was playing Georgia Tech in the Chick-fil-A Bowl in Atlanta.
A black QB, not a white QB, flashed across the screen and was making plays. Rohan Davey was taking snaps ahead of Josh Booty, the white QB, a Louisiana legend from Evangel Christian. Davey led the Tigers to a win with a strong second-half performance.
Clayton and Spears looked at each other. "What just happened?" Maybe Saban could override the politics, after all. A black QB was allowed to be the star of the game they were watching on TV. It had happened before at LSU with Herb Tyler (1995-98), a black QB who shone, but Clayton saw a black QB in competition with a white QB. The black QB scooted ahead; he was allowed to scoot ahead.
In the Dallas restaurant, the Baton Rouge boys starteds doing something preposterous. They started recruiting for LSU. A south Baton Rouge kid and a kid from the Bottom, who would have stuck their fingers in a light socket before selling for LSU, became salesmen for the Tigers. Perhaps the place wasn't so bad at all. They worked on the high school players in Dallas at the all-star game who had still not made up their minds where to go to college. In all, Clayton said, six players in that game went to LSU.
"He meant what he said about there not being politics anymore," Clayton said of Saban. "You could tell on the television that night. What Rohan did changed some people's minds."
Spears flipped to LSU. ... "It was, who is your daddy? Who did your daddy play for? How much money did they give?" said Spears. "Nick got there and he could have cared less whose daddy played there." ...
In 2003, LSU (13-1) won a national championship. That 2001 class - headlined by Clayton and Spears, two Baton Rouge stars who had sworn they would not play for the Tigers - was the core of the first LSU team to win a title since 1958.