‘Tis the season for “open competition.”
Those two words are on the tip of every college football coach’s tongue, while they scramble for new ways to make it sound as if the backup quarterback nips at the heels of the heir apparent.
From Alabama to Georgia to Notre Dame to defending champion Ohio State, top programs have unnamed starting quarterbacks. Don’t expect any naming to occur anytime soon. Never mind that each of those teams will play a spring game Saturday. That date matters less than what happens four days later: The transfer portal opens for the 10-day spring sweepstakes.
Transfer portal guides rhetoric on quarterback competitions
Roster management tops a coach's checklist this time of year. Nobody wants his backup quarterback getting sucked into portal’s vacuum, less than four months before the season kicks off. So, coaches draw out competitions as long as possible – if not on the practice field, than at least with their rhetoric.
At some schools, there’s no hiding reality. You’d be laughed off for trying. So, Texas coach Steve Sarkisian formalized the anointing of Arch Manning as the team's starter in February. In other breaking news, rainfall made the ground wet.
At Alabama, though, where the Crimson Tide must replace NFL-bound Jalen Milroe? It’s a three-deep competition!
So indicates Kalen DeBoer’s rhetoric, anyway, about veteran Ty Simpson, freshman Keelon Russell and transfer Austin Mack, a former Washington backup who followed DeBoer to Tuscaloosa last year.
“They are all three making some throws, making some big-time throws,” DeBoer said last week.
Sounds just like Notre Dame, where coach Marcus Freeman said ...
