Veteran White wants one more
MIAMI – It’s not easy being a 24-year-old college football player, even when you’re as good as Oklahoma quarterback Jason White.
Some opponents ragged on White this season for supposedly overstaying his welcome in the amateur game.
“At Baylor somebody asked me when I’d file for retirement,” White said. “And I hadn’t graduated at the time, so their crowd had a chant: JA-SON WHI-ITE. GRA-DU-ATE.
“They came up with some good lines, but I knew I was going to get comments about my age.”
White didn’t care. After being granted an extra year of eligibility for medical reasons, he decided to return to Norman for season No. 6.
His reasoning was twofold: He wanted to enhance his reputation with NFL evaluators, and he wanted to win the Big 12 and national championship.
Although White won the Heisman Trophy in 2003, his season ended in misery with losses to Kansas State in the conference title game and LSU in the Sugar Bowl. His surgically repaired knees were banged up and his performance against LSU – 13-for-37 for 102 yards with two interceptions—spurred some e-mailers to ask White to return his trophy. Others asked for a recount.
“I thrive on stuff like that,” White said. “I use it as motivation. I don’t read the good stuff guys write about me, I read the bad stuff.”
White can end his long Oklahoma career tonight by beating Southern California in an Orange Bowl that some view as the biggest game in college football history.
For starters, it’s a BCS championship game between undefeated teams that have ranked 1-2 in every poll since August.
The schools ooze tradition and excellence, ranking eighth (Oklahoma) and 10th (USC) in all-time victories. The programs have combined to win 13 wire-service national titles, and 17 overall.
No bowl game has featured the reigning (Matt Leinart) and a former (White) Heisman Trophy winners. And never have four Heisman Trophy finalists (Leinart, White, Adrian Peterson, Reggie Bush) met between the lines.
“It’s the perfect game,” Oklahoma fullback J.D. Runnels said.
And what about those fans paying $1,000 for a ticket?
“I think they are smart,” Runnels said. “They will definitely get what they paid for.”
Oklahoma has the game’s best overall back in Peterson, who needs just three yards to pass California’s J.J. Arrington as the nation’s leading rusher. A 22-yard effort would give Peterson the NCAA freshman rushing record, topping Ron Dayne’s mark of 1,863 yards.
USC’s Bush has drawn the kind of raves normally reserved for game-changers in other sports, such as Michael Jordan.
Bush averaged 9.9 yards when he touched the ball in 2004. He ran for 204 yards in USC’s season finale against UCLA, caught three touchdown passes in the opener against Virginia Tech, averaged 26.4 yards on kickoff returns and returned two punts for scores.