Fine. I'll be the contrarian.
He's tied for the SEC lead in touchdown passes. Just named conference player of the week. His team's got a new coach and could easily go 7-5 with a bowl bid.
Still, he gets it from all sides. Can't do this, can't do that. He's not ... he's not ... what? A world-beater? All he was cracked up to be? Or is it that he's, unforgivably, just average?
A ton of schools wanted him. Here's a line from the sports/recruiting site rivals.com, dated January 26, 2005:
Rivals.com's final prospect rankings for the Class of 2005 are out and over the next few days Rivals.com will break down the top five prospects at each position. Today, AMP highlights the top five quarterback prospects for the Class of 2005: Mark Sanchez, Ryan Perrilloux, Jonathan Crompton, Jake Christensen and Harrison Beck.
Funny what happens to these can't-miss kids on their way to the big time. Sanchez (Southern Cal) is starting in the pros. Perrilloux (LSU) is now at Jacksonville State, Christensen (Iowa) is at Eastern Illinois and Beck (Nebraska, N.C. State) is at North Alabama.
And Jonathan Crompton, one year removed from death threats, is a good-enough QB in the best conference around.
-- RTR
Posts
5 comments:
Like you say Crompton may be good enough. He certainly looked good against UGA. However, this from the Athens Banner-Herald may temper the enthusiasm for Crompton a bit: "Tennessee quarterback Jonathan Crompton became the third quarterback to set a career high in passing yardage in six games against Georgia this season. Crompton threw for 310 yards, Arkansas' Ryan Mallett passed for 408 and South Carolina's Stephen Garcia had 313." As a Dawgs fan, if there are other QBs out there who want to set career high passing marks, I say, bring 'em on.
RTR, rather than making a sound argument that Crompton is good enough, you have made a rather fine argument to completely ignore the recruit-ranking geeks. Like Tomlinson said yesterday, all Crompton did was rack up yards running a naked bootleg all day that UGA (for whatever reason) couldn't figure out. If he does anything against 'Bama and/or the Fightin' Chickens and we'll talk. And I'd bet the whole farm against that happening (either game).
Not to worry, J, I'm not going all Rocky Top on y'all. (And I do think Bama will hand his hat to him, and probably USC too). Just figure there are some folks in Baton Rouge and Oxford who are just as restless about their QBs at the moment. Maybe we should make it a regular feature -- This Week's Beleaguered Signal-Caller.
This is classic "build up the competition so your win looks all the more impressive." Bama will beat UT like a rented mule, but it won't help Bama much becuase everyone thinks UT is crap.
congrats, Esq., you've managed to do what so far we haven't -- get talkers from throughout the SEC. thanks for the link, by the way.
Post a Comment