Patton: Sanchez following his heart to NFL
If it were, me, I'd have stayed.
If I were Mark Sanchez, I would have nodded my head when Pete Carroll told me that quarterbacks who leave college early for the NFL have a less than 50 percent chance of succeeding.
When the old, gray-haired guy stressed that another year leading his Trojans would give pro scouts a much better idea of how talented I was, making me a sure-thing high draft pick, rather than a roulette-wheel first-rounder, I would have said, "Yup, yup, I think you're right coach."
Then I would have closed my eyes, leaned back and pictured why I really wanted to stay, and never had any intention of leaving USC in the first place.
"Mark,"
I would have said to myself. "Ain't college life grand?"
Hanging with my buddies. Being a star on campus, a veritable coed magnet. Taking a couple of goofy classes in the extra year, like Matt Leinart and his infamous ballroom dancing gig. And, mostly, running one of the best college football teams in America, taking a crack at a national championship and the Heisman Trophy.
Who needs the NFL just yet? The money will be there next year. So will the demands and the responsibilities of being a card-carrying adult.
What I like is being a kid, for all intents and purposes. I'd choose the Wonder Years, and channel Peter Pan for one more glorious year before the inevitable crash into the working world.
Frankly, it's what most Trojans have done over the years, even the most NFL-ready talents on the team, from Leinart to linebacker Rey Maualuga to current junior safety Taylor Mays, perhaps the highest potential draft pick of them all.
Obviously, they aren't Sanchez.
People talked, he listened, and in the end he did what he wanted to do all along anyway -- grow up and take his right arm to the NFL.
A mistake? Clearly some people think so.
As it is right now, he is being touted by the experts as one of the top two quarterbacks in the NFL draft, neck-and-neck with Georgia's Matt Stafford. Surely Sanchez is someone's first-round pick.
That was enough. The junior quarterback's dream couldn't wait, despite doubts from his family, advice from Trojans in the NFL and a remarkably strident assessment from his coach.
"I am disappointed that the information we had didn't make it clear enough,"
said Carroll at a Thursday news conference. "Statistics don't back up ... the way he's going about it."
"He's going against the grain and he knows it."
It's funny how things worked out. Coming out of the Rose Bowl, it seemed most logical and obvious that three-year starter Mays, the man-among-boys on defense, would leave early and that Sanchez, with only 16 career starts, would return.
Wrong and wrong. In the end, both acted less like steely-eyed automatons making the most rational of decisions, and more like the college kids they are, doing what their hearts told them.
Try to fight that.
While Mays relished the idea of staying in school for his full four years, getting his degree and, yes, soaking up the social life, Sanchez, who redshirted his freshman year, made a point of saying, "I'm not leaving early, I've been here for four years."
His focus was simple: fulfilling "a lifelong dream,"
which in his case is all of 22 years.
We can all go "Tsk, tsk, tsk,"
but we aren't them. It's time to just say, "Good luck."
