Decision 2009: Why Matt Barkley Will Be USC's Starting Quarterback

In case USC’s head football coach hasn’t made this abundantly clear already, allow me to do so for him: Pete Carroll has no problem relying on true freshmen.

They’ve been his go-to options on offense (Mike Williams and Dwayne Jarrett), and his stoppers on defense (Taylor Mays).

They’ve started season openers (Kris O’Dowd), and national title games (such as 2005, when Brian Cushing and Rey Maualuga composed two-thirds of the starting linebacker corps).

They’ve even started at the most storied position in school history, as running backs CJ Gable, Emmanuel Moody, and Joe McKnight all have at Tailback U in the past three years.

But there is one barrier even Pete Carroll hasn’t crossed. Quarterbacks at USC wait their turn.

Indeed, no matter what the King of Competition says, the facts remain that since Matt Leinart took over, USC’s starting quarterback is also its most experienced, irrespective of pedigree.

John David Booty knows. He was the best quarterback prospect in the country, the prize of one of the most intense recruiting wars in history in which the Trojans triumphed over home school LSU.

As if that weren’t enough, he did it in just three years of high school, becoming the only high school football player ever to graduate a full year early, leaving Louisiana prep powerhouse Evangel Christian Academy after his junior year to join USC.

Booty, to that point the best quarterback Pete Carroll had ever recruited, sat on the bench for three years before securing the starting job as a redshirt junior.

Mark Sanchez knows it as well. He too was the best quarterback prospect in the country when he signed with USC in 2005.

Coming from the Trojans’ backyard in nearby Mission Viejo, USC beat out virtually every top program in the country for his services, and as the best Orange County signal caller since Carson Palmer, Sanchez had the Trojan faithful hanging on his every practice snap in hopeful expectation.

Sanchez surpassed Booty as the best quarterback Pete Carroll had ever recruited. He too sat on the bench for three years before getting his chance as a redshirt junior.

Given that, you can forgive longtime Trojan fans for scoffing at the gradually building hype train following 18-year-old Matt Barkley.

For those unfamiliar with his background (no, he’s not related to Charles), he enters the gates of Troy with similar pomp and circumstance to his predecessors.

A four year starter at Santa Ana powerhouse Mater Dei, he three was the best quarterback prospect in the country (aren’t they all?) upon enrolling early at USC in January.

Along the way, he not only Gatorade National Player of the Year honors, but did so as a junior, the first one ever to hold the accolade.

He has been compared to a young Peyton Manning, with recruiting expert Jamie Newberg going so far as to call him as “the top pro-style QB of the decade.”

It is Barkley’s turn now to hold the mantle of the best quarterback Pete Carroll has ever recruited.

Do not, however, expect him to sit on the bench for three years.

Originally expected to carry the same clipboard that Booty and Sanchez became so intimately acquainted with in their first few years, Barkley scrapped those plans by blowing the doors off USC’s spring camp just as the coaches were getting him fitted for a redshirt.

As a result, he leapfrogged Arkansas transfer Mitch Mustain, himself a former Gatorade POY, into a head-to-head battle with redshirt sophomore Aaron Corp for the vacant starting quarterback job at a time when most kids his age were at their senior prom.

Needless to say, Matt Barkley is not most kids, or for that matter, most football players. At 6’2’’, 225 lbs, his body is already as developed at 18 as Sanchez’ was at 21, and with a rocket launcher of a right arm to boot.

Mentally, he’s already neck-and-neck with players going into their third year in the system, which is surprising to say the least. Then again, the guy’s been calling his own audibles since he was 14, so maybe we shouldn’t be surprised after all.

Very few quarterbacks are as proficient in either facet of the game at such a young age, much less both.

Put them together, and Matt Barkley is special even by USC quarterback standards, which is up there with saying that Marissa Miller is special even by supermodel standards.

Pete Carroll said so himself, asserting that Barkley “[is] able to perform at a level we’ve never seen at this stage.” Now, with Corp shelved for the next two to three weeks with a knee injury, Barkley is running the first team offense while the rest of his classmates are just getting their feet wet.

It says here that he won’t be giving them up as long as he’s in a USC uniform.

Despite Corp being named the starter out of spring camp, Barkley’s unparalleled rate of development will eventually force the coaching staff’s hand and put him under center.

By this time next year, many around the program believe that Barkley will be the undisputed best quarterback on the team, a highly likely proposition given how the once gaping chasm between him and Corp has narrowed to a sidewalk crack in a mere few months.

Assuming Corp remains the starter throughout the course of the season, Carroll will face a daunting choice come next fall; keep the best quarterback off the field, or strip Corp of his job and hand it over to someone with zero college starts.

Realistically, either path will result in a transfer; Barkley wouldn’t want to sit on the bench knowing that he is the best quarterback on the team, while Corp wouldn’t want to hand over his job after returning to school as the incumbent.

While such a scenario is a full year away, this season brings with it an even greater concern—the dreaded quarterback controversy.

An agonizing conundrum for any team, no school is riper for hullabaloo than USC, between its status as the de facto pro team in the country’s second largest media market and the quality of its recent signal callers.

Such potential was realized two seasons ago, when the incumbent Booty spent most of the season under siege from angry fans clamoring for his understudy, Sanchez.

Unfortunately, any misstep from Corp would likely result in the same treatment.

Don’t forget, Trojan fans jeered Booty in the Coliseum less than a year removed from a dominating performance in a Rose Bowl rout; if they were vicious to a player with that kind of track record, they would have no problem being vicious to a player with no track record at all.

None of this is fair to Corp, who has enough on his plate with the traditional pitfalls of a rookie starter, not to mention the Trojans’ brutal road schedule that includes games at Ohio State, Cal, Oregon, and Notre Dame.

But America loves it’s phenoms, and as Matt Stafford, Terrelle Pryor, and even Mustain demonstrated in their first year of college, the media—and fans—will have a much longer leash with freshman mistakes than a veteran’s so long as the team wins games.

Pete Carroll knows all of this, which is why he’ll name Matt Barkley his starting quarterback heading into the season. Corp’s brief absence may be all Barkley needs to claim the job but even if it isn’t, Carroll will deal whatever growing pains he may have now because doing so is the only way to avoid much larger, potentially crippling problems in the long term.

Helping matters is a running game that returns its top four backs from last season as well as the entire two deep on the offensive line, enabling new offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates to pound opponents into submission on the ground rather than rely on his young quarterback to win him games.

Of course, there’s no shortage of weapons in the passing game either in the form of receivers Damien Williams and Ronald Johnson, tight end Anthony McCoy, and fullback Stanley Havili, all of whom will contend for All-Pac 10 honors, or in Williams’ and Havili’s case, All-American status.

Regardless of who starts, both Barkley and Corp will have more than enough at their disposal to win games.

But when making a decision that will alter the course of the program for the next several years, Barkley is the obvious choice, something Pete Carroll unquestionably did not anticipate six months ago.

We already knew Pete Carroll liked starting freshmen. Now we—and he—are about to be reminded in a whole new way.