The NFL's druggy draftees

Three college football players with drug charges and positive piss tests on their records were selected in this weekend's NFL Draft.

The "highest" pick - Kansas cornerback Aqib Talib - was tabbed in the first round by Tampa Bay (20th overal), despite failing three tests for pot. Talib led the Jayhawks to their 24-21 Orange Bowl victory over Virginia Tech, scoring on a 60-yard interception return just five mintues into the game.

Talib (right) admitted failing tests while at Kansas during the scouting combine in February. The All-American defensive back chalks it up to immaturity. "It was a stage when I was a young man, moving out of the house, being on your own for the first time," Talib concedes. "All of that stuff happened two and a half years ago, and I learned a lot from it. I'm a grown man now. I have moved forward from that."

Bucs coach John Gruden plans to give Talib the benefit of the doubt. "I'm not going to live in the past," he says. "I'm going to live in the future. I trust this kid, and we're going to give him an opportunity to prove it."

Two more druggy draftees were selected in the third round. With the 90th pick, Chicago took Arkansas defensive tackle Marcus Harrison, who was arrested last summer for felony possession of marijuana (two blunts) and Ecstasy.

"He should have been a first-round pick," the Bears' college scouting director Greg Gabriel observes. "He's already paid his penance. We feel we're getting him at a bargain rate."

The same surely can be said about Michigan wide receiver Mario Manningham, whose draft fortunes went south due to a drug arrest (for Vicodin) and failed tests for pot. The Giants selected him with the 95th pick.

"I don't use marijuana anymore - and I have passed tests since," Manningham wrote in the letter sent to the league's GMs following his revelations at the combine. "I know what is at stake for me and my career. I am learning what it is going to take to be a professional."

However, no GM would take a chance on Oklahoma State receiver Adarius Bowman, once considered a potential first or second rounder until his pot arrest earlier this month.

"Adarius is not a bad guy,” Bowman's agent Brian Underwood explains. "A lot of guys who get in trouble of this nature, sometimes are thugs or really bad guys. He's not a really bad guy. He's a good guy who made a horrible mistake... The major deal is the marijuana charge. There's no question in my mind he would go much higher, the third or fourth rounds, if he didn't have that hanging over him.”

Also see:

College football arrests reach all-time high

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