But of all the big-name college football players who have left school early for the NFL, Josh Booty is surely the first to leave because he wasn't certain of keeping his starting job in college. But that's the simple view. I wouldn't have automatically penciled in Rohan Davey to be LSU's starting quarterback next season, regardless of how clear it looked after the Peach Bowl. Nothing against Davey - he has no bigger fan than me. It's just that Booty has been given up for gone from LSU's offense too many times over the last decade to have been counted out so quickly.
Strange things happen.
There was last year, for instance, when Davey also came off the bench in the season's final game to lead LSU to victory and apparently win the job, only to be felled by a knee injury in a charity basketball game. It's hard to believe Booty only played at LSU for two seasons. His was the one name that wouldn't go away for the entire decade of the '90s, eventually spanning three coaching staffs and two millennia. And I still don't know what to really make of him. I'm still not certain if he's charmed or cursed.