Posted: Sat, 9 Jan 2010 12:04 PM - 8,801 Readers
By: Terry Hersom
Starting four full seasons at quarterback for the University of Texas put Colt McCoy in rare company, indeed.
Matter of fact, thanks in part to an NCAA schedule expansion a couple of years ago, the young man I thought would win the Heisman Trophy last month finished with more career victories (45) than any quarterback in major college football history.
As anyone who watched Thursday night’s national championship game is well aware, McCoy’s bid for win No. 46 was over almost before it started. And, after the Longhorns’ longtime signal-caller was sidelined by a first-quarter shoulder injury, we got ourselves yet another story about one of our homegrown coaching success stories.
Bishop Heelan grad Jeff Dicus, the former University of South Dakota tight end and punter who has coached high school football in Texas since 1983, was probably glued to his TV set, or perhaps even sitting in the Rose Bowl, when true freshman Garrett Gilbert trotted off the sideline to take over for the wounded McCoy.
After all, Gilbert was the starting quarterback for Dicus as a sophomore and junior at Lake Travis High School just outside of Austin.
That was just after a young man named Todd Reesing quarterbacked the Cavaliers during Dicus’s first three seasons at an affluent school with precious little football tradition.
Reesing helped turn things around, to be sure, but he got snubbed by recruiters in his home state even after being named 2004’s Texas Class 4A Player of the Year (largest schools are in 5A) ahead of Matthew Stafford of Dallas Highland Park and Jevan Snead of Stephenville.
Stafford, some will know, went on to play for Georgia and become the No. 1 pick in last year’s NFL draft (Detroit Lions). Meanwhile, Snead spent a year at Texas and then, stuck behind McCoy, a former Texas Class 2A all-stater, transferred to Mississippi. And, just Thursday afternoon, after two spectacular seasons with Ole Miss, Snead announced he will skip his senior season to hopefully join Stafford in pro football.
Reesing also hopes to land with an NFL team after a record-breaking career at Kansas that ended with a disappointing senior campaign this fall. And, Gilbert, his high school successor, certainly has such hopes of his own with as many as three seasons as the Longhorns’ QB still ahead of him.
Keep in mind, Carroll didn’t just win back-to-back state championships at Lake Travis, the first of those before Dicus left the school to become the head coach at Class 5A Duncanville in suburban Dallas. The youngster who rallied Texas to within 24-21 with a strong second half Thursday was also honored as the 2008 national high school player of the year by Gatorade, Parade Magazine and USA Today.
The 6-4, 207-pound Gilbert passed for 12,540 career yards at Lake Travis, a state record. He completed 895 of 1,368 passes for 138 touchdowns, three more numbers that all rank second on the all-time list in a state whose prep football history is certainly unparalleled.
This is the son of the only man ever to suit up for five consecutive Super Bowls, even if Gale Gilbert, the dad, spent all of those years (four with the Bills, one with the Chargers) as a backup quarterback.
Nonetheless, all the talent in the world can’t make up for the lack of experience that led the younger Gilbert to some costly miscues. The first few left the Longhorns staring up at a 24-6 halftime deficit. Then, after pulling his team within 24-21 with 6:15 left, a red zone fumble on a quarterback sack set up Heisman winner Mark Ingram’s clinching one-yard TD run.
Above and beyond McCoy, Gilbert and the aforementioned Stafford and Snead, the rich vein of quarterbacks from Texas was further evidenced by Alabama’s own starter, junior Greg McElroy, a first-year starter for the Tide who led Southlake Carroll, near Dallas, to a mythical national high school championship in 2005.
And, that was the only season as a prep starter for McElroy, who had to wait in the wings behind Chase Daniel, the 2004 national high school player of the year before starring at Missouri.
Gilbert and Dicus, incidentally, collaborated on what was labeled the Class 4A Division II state title in 2007. It’s interesting to note that Lake Travis has made that three championships in a row, reigning as the Class 4A Division I champ the last two years.
WHY THE DIVISIONS?
For what it’s worth, each enrollment class in Texas has two separate playoff brackets to help spread the wealth, more or less. Even though it implies superiority of some sort, Division I isn’t necessarily stronger than Division II.
In Class 5A, for example, there are 245 schools divided into 32 districts which include from six to 10 schools. The top four teams in each district make the playoffs, but the two with the larger four-year enrollments among those four are assigned to Division I.
A quick example from this year:
In District 1, made up of nine El Paso high schools, district champion Coronado (10-0) and Montwood (7-3) went to the Division II playoffs with 2,366 and 2,669 students, respectively, while Dorado (8-2) and Franklin (6-4) were assigned to Division I because they have 2,827 and 3,116 students in grades 9-12.
This same rather arbitrary formula applies to the other classes, although just three schools advance from each district below the 4A level.
DICUS DOES WELL
As for our friend, Jeff Dicus, his teams at Duncanville, a perennial Texas prep basketball power, ended a four-year football playoff drought in Jeff’s inaugural 2008 campaign and then made it back again last fall with a modest 4-5 mark, fourth in District 7
With 3,697 students in the top four grades, Duncanville is the second largest school in the district, which includes the three public schools from Irving along with Grand Prairie, the home two one of Sioux City’s American Association rivals.
A story on Rivals.com suggests Dicus wasn’t just lured to Duncanville by the challenge of a Class 5A job or even a salary bump from $92,000 at Lake Travis to $104,000 at his new school. The prep sports Web site suggests Jeff was at odds with administrators at his old school, where a press release on his resignation was reportedly issued an hour before he had a chance to meet with his team.
