By Harry King
LITTLE ROCK — From spring football at Starkville, Miss., Auburn, Ala., Athens, Ga., and Columbia, S.C., comes encouraging news for Arkansas fans with sky-high expectations.
At Mississippi State, there is no decision about the starting quarterback for 2010. At Auburn, the winner of a four-man competition is a former backup to Tim Tebow who played at a junior college in 2009. At Georgia, Mark Richt had only one choice. At South Carolina, Steve Spurrier is dissatisfied with the obvious choice.
Those notations are particularly significant for Arkansas because the Razorbacks play at Starkville, Auburn, Athens, and Columbia, and Arkansas has not won a road game in the Southeastern Conference since Nov. 23, 2007, at LSU. To win nine this year, Arkansas likely has to win at least two on the road.
The most important position in football is the one where the Razorbacks are ahead of most of the others in the Southeastern Conference. Although Ryan Mallett never took a snap in the spring, Razorback fans are all-in with the strong-armed junior who is being mentioned along with Washington’s Jake Locker and Stanford’s Andrew Luck as the best in the land. He cannot win a game by himself, but he gives the Razorbacks a chance to beat almost any opponent.
At the end of spring practice in Starkville, The Associated Press reported: “Mississippi State began spring practices without a clear-cut starting quarterback for the fall, and it has ended much the same way.” Junior Chris Relf and redshirt freshman Tyler Russell are the names of significance.
At Auburn, No. 1 is Cameron Newton, who beat out a senior, a sophomore, and a redshirt freshman. He threw 10 passes one year at Florida and redshirted his second year. His impressive stats were compiled while leading Blinn College to a national JC championship. He does have the size (6-6, 247) to run the ball in Gus Malzahn’s offense.
At Georgia, both Aaron Murray and Zach Mettenberger enrolled in January 2009, roomed together that first semester, and redshirted together while senior Joe Cox completed 56 percent of his passes in an 8-5 season that did not sit well with the Georgia faithful.
This spring, Murray and Mettenberger were neck and neck until Richt dismissed Mettenberger and two others.
Like most Georgia quarterbacks, Murray was big time in high school. One positive is that he has an easy opener against Louisiana-Lafayette and a trip to South Carolina to help prepare for the Bulldogs’ SEC home opener against Arkansas.
Of all the developments, or lack thereof, at the aforementioned four schools, most intriguing is word from that Spurrier is disappointed in Stephen Garcia. At the end of 2009, Garcia, Mallett, and Alabama’s Greg McElroy would have led the list of established quarterbacks in the SEC for 2010.
But, Spurrier was recently quoted as saying that he would like to see Garcia change his ways a bit and “get fired up about being a great quarterback.” Spurrier’s complaint is that Garcia “doesn’t do anything extra.”
The frustration is to the point, that Spurrier is supposed to be seriously considering playing true freshman Connor Shaw if Shaw progresses this summer as Spurrier thinks he will.
Packaged together, the inexperience and instability bode well for Arkansas.
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Harry King is sports columnist for Stephens Media’s Arkansas News Bureau. His e-mail address is hking@arkansasnews.com.
