The college football season is just about here. It must be close indeed, because you can spot the gobs of hair gel on Kirk Herbstreit's noggin from 10,000 paces.
Yes, it's here, which means some will resume their annual ignoring, bashing or both -- take your pick -- of one of the best college quarterbacks in the country.
|
|
| Chris Leak is a drop-back passer who's adjusting to Florida's new scrambling system. (Getty Images) |
Brady Quinn, the Notre Dame robo-quarterback, has his feet massaged and lobes caressed by the national media. Good quarterback, sexy, studly -- no question. Quinn is second among career active quarterbacks with 8,336 total career passing yards. Do you know who's third? Leak with 8,271. I stink at math, but I believe Leak is right behind the quarterback everyone says will one day run the galaxy.
Leak is the Southeastern Conference's active career leader in wins (22-11), touchdown passes (65), passing yards and completions (663). He is in the top five in every significant career school passing category. By the time this season is over, he will lead in several of them. Yep, he sucks all right.
All this guy does is win games, get his face bashed in and get back up from the turf, and he's talked about by some Gators fans and members of the media like his name is Ryan Leaf. To some, he is Ryan Leak.
Leak is treated with disdain instead of a deserved delight, cursed and not coddled, taunted by some -- not all, but enough -- testy Gator-head fans who pummel and pulverize Leak anonymously on websites, gutless and invisible, spewing ugliness as if they were paid by the slur. Sometimes I think there are fans who equate bashing players in chat rooms with getting cyber-booty.
Leak's season, Leak's story, will be one of the biggest in college football this year and an interesting case study. With popular high school All-American and top national recruit Tim Tebow lurking behind him, and a legion of Tebow supporters in tow, Leak will test the theory, widely accepted now, that black quarterbacks have made it in football and race is no longer a factor at the position. That they no longer face double standards and higher expectations.
Leak plays in the South, in the SEC, and believe me, despite the influx of black quarterbacks in the conference, race is still a factor in both. Only naïve dupes or bamboozled fools don't know this. Part of the evidence of how race, at least partially, is relevant when it comes to Leak is how some Gators fans -- not all, just some -- treat Leak. He has an opportunity to break several significant school records by Danny Wuerffel, who is white, and there are Gators fans who hate the idea of a black thrower shattering the marks of a white Wuerffel.
|
|
| Make no mistake: There are plenty of Florida fans who are glad Chris Leak didn't follow his brother to Tennessee. (Getty Images) |
Yet Curtis knows reality as well. While the school's administration might be colorblind, not all of the school's fans are.
"There are fans who don't want Chris to break Danny's records because Chris is black," Curtis explained. "I can't say it is every Gator fan. It's not. But it's enough. I hear about that from white friends and white fans that support Chris. It's unfortunate it has to be that way, but that's the way it is."
"There are a lot of white fans who are behind Chris," Curtis explained. "Those white fans tell me there are other white fans who do not like Chris because he's black. Some of these fans call into the talk shows and post horrible things on the websites. Some of those people are dirt."
