His story, his fall from grace, is well known. But he insists it isn’t the last chapter, even as he might be looking at the CFL for this upcoming football season. Mauk was not selected in April’s NFL Draft and did not latch on as an undrafted free agent.
But given everywhere he’s been, this won’t stop Mauk from someday playing on Sundays.
Mauk at Missouri was a member of the SEC All-Freshmen team in 2013. He threw for over 4,300 yards with 42 touchdowns and 19 interceptions in three seasons with the program. But decisions away from the football field threw him a curve.
A video of Mauk that surfaced in early 2016 appeared to show the Missouri starting quarterback snorting a line of cocaine.
“I was playing the part,” Mauk said. “If you watch closely, nothing comes off the table. The line doesn’t move. It was a mistake that I wish I could go back and change but I can’t.”
Previous brushes with the law had the three-year starter already in the doghouse, and this wasn’t a good look. Given Missouri’s other struggles at the time with the image of its athletic program and the school at large, there was a zero tolerance stance this time for Mauk.
One of the most promising players in college football was off the team.
Now he sits changed, measured. He isn’t brash, not the way he was depicted as a party animal. All the things that made him a star in college football remain; the arm strength is there, the accuracy is there and the production in college football’s toughest conference is certainly there.
Down but not out, Mauk still might have a way to realize his NFL dream, a dream to show what he is capable of between the lines of the gridiron and not the lines that are often associated with his name.
It was a difficult time in Mauk’s life.
The middle of summer 2015, Mauk had found out that his father was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. His father, a highly successful high school football coach in Ohio, is someone he calls a friend, a mentor. He was crushed, as any son would be.
The diagnosis was grim, that Mike Mauk might not make it through his treatment. The son took it hard and admits he made some poor choices and, rather than seek support from his teammates and coaches, he hung out with the wrong crowd.
The video that surfaced in January after Maty Mauk’s redshirt junior season was old at the time it became public. That doesn’t stop the memory from being there, a moment he remembers “like it was yesterday.”
Mauk doesn’t party anymore, and he says of the old friends who put him in those bad spots: “Well, they are part of the past.”
His father did make it through treatment and, last year, received a diagnosis of full remission.
Mauk, in an effort to move on and revive his football career, trained in New Jersey prior to his Pro Day in Missouri.
The prep was done with Jay Fiedler, the former NFL quarterback who has earned quite the reputation over the past few years as a guru to draft prospects.
