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Sporting News, The, April 10, 2000 by Mike Griffith

Forget the prom. Tennessee's Casey Clausen and John Rattay are part of a growing bend of quarterbacks who are graduating early from high school to get a jump on their college careers

Quarterback controversy? It's not that simple. What Tennessee has with the midterm arrivals of freshmen Casey Clausen and John Rattay is a quarterback quandary.

In the midst of spring practice--a time when most freshman recruits are getting measured for prom tuxes and planning senior skip day--Clausen and Rattay are neck-and-neck with sophomore Joey Mathews and redshirt freshman A.J. Suggs to replace departed Tee Martin. Mathews and Suggs also left high school early for Tennessee, and for now, Mathews has a slight lead to start the season opener September 2. But by arriving on campus early, Clausen and Rattay have a four-month head start on other Class of 2000 freshmen--working out in the weight room, learning the offense, throwing to receivers and getting acclimated to school. And each plans to stay in Knoxville over the summer to further enhance his development. Early enrollment isn't right or wrong, but it's certainly becoming the thing to do.

I'm making mistakes, but I'm learning," says Clausen, who attended Alemany High in Mission Hills, Calif. "Coming in here in the summer, I don't think there would have been enough time to adjust."

Even Peyton Manning needed time to adjust at Tennessee. Had quarterbacks Jerry Colquitt and Todd Helton not gotten injured at the start of the 1994 season, Manning--who did not enroll early--likely would have played sparingly as a freshman, if at all.

"You've got, what, three weeks of practice in the fall, some 29 days?" says Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer, whose team went 9-3 in 1999 and will conclude spring drills April 15. "Unless all you're going to do is hand off on every down, it would be impossible for a quarterback with that little experience to be that effective. Coming in early gives kids an extra spring to study the offense and defense and accelerates their maturing process."

Enrolling in college early didn't hurt Eric Zeier, a former Georgia quarterback who now plays for Tampa Bay.

"Looking back on it now, it was one of the best decisions I made," says Zeier, who set 18 SEC and 67 school records as a four-year starter from 1991-94. "About the only thing I ever gave up was going to the senior prom, but my focus was on football, and I was ready to get to college and pursue my dreams."

Zeier broke into the Bulldogs' starting lineup the sixth game of his freshman year, but he might not have been able to do that had he not had a spring and summer's worth of experience.

"Making the jump from high school to college, you have to know so much more about the game," says Zeier. "Schematically, it's so different that coming in the fall it would have been much, much more difficult."

Vols offensive coordinator Randy Sanders was among the first SEC quarterbacks to enroll early, leaving high school midway through his senior year for Rocky Top in 1984.

"I don't know whose idea it was, but one day my principal came up to me and asked, `How would you like to go to Tennessee early?' "Sanders says. "I thought, `Why not?' So I graduated on a Friday, enrolled on Monday, and spring practice started on Wednesday. I never regretted it."

Why would he? Sanders, 34, has stayed on the fast track ever since. He has gone from graduate assistant to receivers coach to running backs coach to coordinator and now stands as the favorite to succeed Fulmer as Tennessee's coach, albeit not for another 10 or 15 years. With examples like Zeier and Sanders, it's hard for anyone to argue against the merits of early enrollment, especially for quarterbacks because of the complexity of the job.

"The student-athlete is getting more time to get acclimated to the institution," says Steve Mallonee, the NCAA director of membership services and governance liaison. "Arguably, it may be better for them socially to get into the environment early and get acclimated so they don't have so much pressure in the fall. I've been with the NCAA for 15 years, and I can't remember there ever being talk of it being a problem."

So long as the athlete isn't pressured into the decision, says Michigan coach Lloyd Carr. "In terms of the guy's college career, it's a very positive thing," Carr says. "But from a high school experience standpoint, the guy is leaving all of his friends. It has to be an individual decision. If the guy plays spring sports, and the guy wants to go to the junior-senior prom and graduate with his classmates, I mean, he's missing out on things you can't buy. It's like the guy who leaves early to go to the NFL; it's a trade-off. Sometimes those guys look back and say, `Boy, I gave up too much.'"

Florida coach Steve Spurrier can appreciate Carr's point of view. "I would have hated to give up the spring of my senior year," says Spurrier. "But things are a little different now than they were in my day. Athletics are more specialized now."

Spurrier's advice: If you're going to skip the second half of your senior year, make it count. Three of the top quarterbacks on the Gators' depth chart came to Florida as midterm enrollees: Jesse Palmer, Rex Grossman and Brock Berlin. Spurrier says Berlin, who arrived just months ago from Evangel Christian in Shreveport, La., where he was touted as the nation's best high school passer, is the only one who has benefited from coming early.