Jadeveon Clowney shops for injury insurance

Jadeveon Clowney will play during his junior year of college at South Carolina, but an insurance company says that the highly-touted defensive end has looked into a huge insurance policy in case he suffers a major injury while playing.

Clowney is almost guaranteed to be a top-five pick - if not the No. 1 overall pick - in the 2014 NFL Draft after a sophomore year where he recorded 13 sacks and 23.5 tackles for losses. He could have been the No. 1 pick this year, but the NFL requires players to be at least three years removed from college. So in case he does get injured in his likely final year playing for free, Alex Marvez of FoxSports reports that he's looking into insurance that will guarantee him a large sum of money - up to $5 million - in case his future earning value is damaged before he's able to sign an NFL contract.

These deals are pretty routine, but it's an issue that's come up a lot recently thanks to age limits in the NFL and NBA. Clowney's teammate, Marcus Lattimore, suffered season-ending knee injuries in both his sophomore and junior years, including a gruesome one this past season that tore his ACL and detached his PCL and LCL. Once, he was a surefire first-rounder, now, he has no idea when he'll be selected, as SB Nation's Louis Bien wrote when he interviewed the running back. And Wednesday, it was revealed that Kentucky basketball player Nerlens Noel suffered a season-ending ACL tear in his league-mandated year between high school and the pros, although the former likely No. 1 overall pick had insurance in case of such an injury.