MANHATTAN, Kan. — In 2008, Dayne Crist walked on water. This week, some Kansas fans are wondering if he could hit it falling out of a boat.
In 2008, the talk was about Collin Klein's potential as a receiver. This week, it's about what color suit he'll wear to the Heisman Trophy ceremony.
"It's one of those cases where you look back and say, 'This is why the coaches get paid $2 million or $3 million dollars to make these decisions, to really project them,'" Brandon Huffman, national recruiting analyst at Scout.com, said of the two quarterbacks at center stage when No. 7 Kansas State hosts Kansas on Saturday. "It just goes to show you why developing players is the next step. You can bring in all the talent in the world, but if you're not developing them, you're not going to be coaching for very long."
Even the most grizzled vets in the recruiting business misfire now and again. A prep stud gets hurt, or winds up on the wrong side of a coach, or decides to follow his girlfriend to another school. The Tom Lemmings of the world can project an awful lot of things, but they can't project real life.
On the flip side, one man's closed door is another man's open window. A dark horse gets a sudden growth spurt. A kid busts his tail in the weight room or at film study and grinds his way up the depth chart, one rung at a time. A stopwatch can gauge a plugger's 40 time, but it won't tell you a darned thing about his heart.
But rarely do you get two such spectacular misfires on one field, in the same state, battling for the same trophy from two completely different extremes. When Scout.com ranked the top incoming collegiate quarterbacking prospects from the recruiting class of 2008, Crist was No. 3 in the nation, a five-star special.
Klein? No. 106. Two stars. A project.
Ah, retrospect.
Roll the calendar forward four years, and things start to go all topsy-turvy. Crist, the Jayhawks' fifth-year senior transfer, heads into the weekend having completed just 48.1 percent of his passes (62-129) with more interceptions (four) than touchdowns (two). With Kansas sitting at 1-3 and having already lost to Rice and Northern Illinois, more than a few faithful in Lawrence are howling for backups. Klein, meanwhile, is the toast of Manhattan, directing the Wildcats to a 4-0 start while throwing at 70 percent clip, a two-way threat on a pace to run for 15 touchdowns and another 15 through the air.
"I think it's right place, right time," Huffman said of Klein. "It's one of those cases where it's really a crapshoot. The interesting thing is, him and Dayne Crist were similar-sized players coming out of high school. It wasn't like Collin needed to add weight or something like that. What it comes down to is, Klein was a better fit with what K-State did.
"If Bill Snyder doesn't come back (to the job), is Collin Klein as effective as he is now? If Jim Harbaugh had taken the Notre Dame job, or somebody other than Brian Kelly, is Dayne Crist in the NFL right now, because he left early and developed quicker and didn't have to constantly look over his shoulder?"
With Crist, the road from his native California, east to Notre Dame, then west to Kansas, is littered with what-ifs. What if he hadn't gotten hurt? What if those knees had held up? What if Weis hadn't gotten fired? What if he'd been spared the wrong side of Kelly's magenta-faced, profanity-spewing wrath?
"I have seen (Crist) stand on one hash mark and throw the ball 15 yards deep to the far boundary," Kansas State coach Bill Snyder offered Tuesday. "That is an NFL throw. Those are hard to come by. They are not an easy task, but he is able to do it."
And yet the finer points — consistency, touch, feel — have, quite literally, proven to be a hit-or-miss proposition. It's not a matter of talent; Crist was blessed with the kind of howitzer that could zip a ball through a concrete wall. Assuming, of course, that he could hit the wall.
"It doesn't happen too often; you don't really see guys like (Crist) just completely implode," Huffman said. "Everything that pretty much could go wrong did go wrong at Notre Dame."
Some stars cross, others align. Snyder and Klein, by contrast, meshed into an almost seamless combination, Jedi and Padawan, the Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker of the Little Apple. At 6-foot-5 and 226 pounds, Klein runs like an angry stallion, always stampeding downhill. Like a guard on the basketball court, the Colorado native's also developed the deft slight-of-hand and vision needed to make the Wildcats' zone-read plays — keep the rock in tailback John Hubert's belly, or snatch it back and aim for daylight? — pile up yardage by the chunk.
"Again, some people are going to think you're great. Some people are going to think you're terrible," Klein said. "You know what? It's just about trying to get a little better, and (to) make sure I'm better today than I was yesterday. And that's what I can control. I'm just trying, again, to be the best player I can possibly be. And whatever that looks like, and whatever the Lord has (for me), then let's go."
Right place. Right time. Right now.
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter @seankeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com
