By William Qualkinbush.
By William Qualkinbush.
After Friday’s practice, the first of many this season for the Clemson football team, little was said that will really tip the scales.
Sure, there are little snippets of quotes that might create a bit of a stir. Some early speculation might capture the news cycle for a day or two. Position battles, although in their infant stages, can be interesting for fans foaming at the mouth and ready to gobble up even the tiniest bit of semi-news. Anything Dabo Swinney says is generally worth remembering.
Major storylines that impact the season, however, are normally few and far between. Preseason camp is an exercise in page view economics, with demand far exceeding the supply of legitimately beneficial information. Impactful information is sometimes hard to find amidst the riff raff.
When anything presents itself as something potentially useful down the road, we in the media must pounce on it like a ravenous lion on raw meat. It’s the way this thing works.
Chad Morris had talked to the media for about 20 minutes or so before I had a chance for a quick one-on-one with him. In the course of that conversation, he described quarterback Cole Stoudt—the heir apparent to Tajh Boyd—as the “face of the university”.
It seemed like hyperbole. “Face of the university”? Talk about high stakes for a player getting ready to start his first game after years of experience watching, waiting, and learning.
Before that statement, Morris called Stoudt the “face of the program”. That phrase is more in line with what coaches generally say about the quarterback of the football team at a football school. But even those words are a little bit puzzling.
What about Dabo Swinney? What about Vic Beasley? What about Morris himself, or his opposing coordinator Brent Venables?
No, Morris chose Stoudt, and it can be telling that he did so.
This commentary on who or what leads an institution of higher learning is one of the great debates of the modern era in collegiate athletics. The riff between athletics and academics is deep, deeper in some places than in others. Clemson is actually blessed in this regard but not without some pushback from the scholastic wing.
There are some facts neither side can dispute. Athletic success absolutely generates academic interest from prospective students, providing a mutual benefit to both the engineering school and the football team. As someone who has been part of a student body recently, there is a different level of excitement on campus when a major sports team—at Clemson, this can be football, men’s basketball, or baseball—is winning games.
But does Clemson really want its starting quarterback to be the “face of the university”? Wouldn’t it mean more to have the president seize that mantle? Shouldn’t the athletic director or one of the aforementioned adult leaders be that figure?
No, Morris anointed Stoudt the face, the picture people with no direct affiliation with Clemson will carry around in their heads as they go about their lives. Whether he’s right or not is largely irrelevant. The broader point here, beyond the inherent argument about the true mission of a college or university, is that Stoudt faces enormous pressure and scrutiny—and he knows it.
Maybe this is just a way for Morris to motivate his guy. Maybe his words have no basis in fact. Maybe they’re just a way to raise the stakes in an effort to raise the level of effort, or intensity, or consistency, in Stoudt.
But maybe he’s right. Maybe Stoudt, as the quarterback at Clemson University, is what people will see when they think about the school.
Morris seems to feel that such a label applies to all Clemson quarterbacks, no matter who the actual face is. The head coach, a coordinator, the president, the athletic director—maybe the “face of the university” is more about a position than a man.
Either way, Stoudt now understands how big this is, because Morris told him so. There is no right or wrong, but it’s an interesting take, and that’s all I need in the month of August.
God Bless!
WQ
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