ESPN NFL

This has been a pretty lousy time to be Maurice Clarett. It's also been a lousy time to be Ohio State, but sometimes serendipity is forced upon you.

But this isn't about Ohio State. The Buckeyes are getting theirs, or at least the NCAA's version of "getting theirs." Instead, this is about Clarett, and his apparent future as a blocking back. Or a tight end. Or a left tackle. Or a Hamilton Tiger Cat.

Clarett ran a few more 40s for interested NFL scouts the other day, whittling ridiculous times like 4.87 and 4.72 down to the mid-4.6s. This is important if you have never run a 40, because your rec room isn't 40 yards long.

But it's still the mid-4.6s, and NFL scouts are as adept at finding reasons not to recommend a player as rave about him, and the truth is that Clarett probably has blown his chance to be a trusted running back at the NFL level.

There are reasons for this (Tom Friend enumerated nearly all of them in our fetid little hairpin turn on the info superhighway), but results are what count, and the truth is that Clarett seems like a guy who likely will be converted into something other than what he was at Ohio State. Maybe a strong safety. Or an outside linebacker.

Or a high school coach. Or an insurance adjuster.

Clarett bucked the system, which is all well and good because there is no system that shouldn't take a beating now and then. The best system buckers, though, have always been those whose talents are so incandescent that the system must have those talents, damn the price.

Clarett doesn't seem to be that. Most reports had him looking better, even slightly heavier, but in better shape than he's been for any of his other workouts. Thus, it can be fairly well inferred that this is the best he's got.

And most running backs in the mid-4.6s don't get to be running backs very long. They certainly don't get drafted very high. They absolutely don't end up making big-splash, salary-cap-adjustment-needed money.

Mostly, what they end up being is someone like Cory Schlesinger, or Chris Hetherington, guys who block for the smaller and quicker guys. Or they try a mid-career course change, like Rick Ankiel.

And more typically than either of those, they seek their fortune in other walks of life. As a Toronto Argonaut. A San Jose Sabrecat. A backfield coach at a junior college. Or a Wal-Mart manager.

In fact, he did get up to 250 pounds at one point (the apparent reason for one of his crummier workouts), which suggests that he could end up as, say, Dan Kreider. Or Patrick Hape, a journeyman tight end.

If he really wanted to carbo-load his way to glory, he could become a run stopper, a la Ted Washington. He'd probably need five or six years to get his weight into the high 300s safely, but Americans have been doing that for years, so how hard could it be?

Whatever his future, it surely isn't the one he foresaw when he was helping guide Ohio State to glory. He believed at the time that he was too brilliant not to succeed, and he wasn't the only one.

But tilting at the wrong windmills, fighting the unwinnable fights, and not acing the workouts that would have given him a side-door entrance into the NFL fast lane ... well, it all went south. Unless he ends up in Canada, in which case it would be, well, north.

The lesson here? Well, there isn't one, really. These are special circumstances: Talented young'un pushes the envelope. The envelope pushes back. Talented young'un can't overcome the envelope. And now the envelope might just be sealed with him on the outside.

Not exactly the kind of rollicking tale to entertain the grandkids at Thanksgiving.

On the other hand, the Maurice Clarett story doesn't have to have a lousy ending just because it's probably going to have a different ending. You find your bliss where it is, and you're responsible for finding it. Put another way, a mid-4.6 in the 40 is not the same as the mill closing down.

But it sure can seem like it if you're not really careful. The world is full of guys who never got over their version of a bad 40 time.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com