MORGANTOWN — They say if you look long enough and far enough you will find someone on this earth who is your double.

West Virginia University’s Bradley Starks doesn’t have to look very far. On Saturday, all he’ll have to do is look across the field to the other sideline for the Liberty player wearing No. 10, Mike Brown.

Starks came to West Virginia expecting to play quarterback, but upon his arrival from Orange County High in Florida he found Patrick White and Jarrett Brown standing in line ahead of him. Rather than be relegated to a couple of years of riding the bench, he agreed to move to wide receiver, where his many talents could be utilized.

You look at Mike Brown’s biography in the Liberty media guide and it lists him as a quarterback, but that is like listing Michael Jordan as a baseball player. Oh, Brown can play quarterback, but, like Starks, he came to Liberty and found his path blocked.

So it was that last year he served as backup QB, a running back and a wide receiver, awaiting his turn this year.

Then, over the offseason, Liberty drew Tommy Beecher in to play his senior year. Beecher had been the starting quarterback under Steve Spurrier at South Carolina last season, although it turned out to be not much of a season as he passed for 106 yards in his first game with four interceptions, a shoulder injury and a concussion.

Let’s just say Spurrier was unimpressed, and Beecher never played again, ending the season as the quarterback on the scout team.

“It’s no big secret that last year didn’t go as I wanted it to down at South Carolina. And it came to a point where I didn’t know if I was going to pursue a fifth year of eligibility or not,” Beecher said in a conference call this week. “But the last couple weeks of the season I felt like I had some more football left in me, and I felt like I could contribute to a team. So I started looking elsewhere.”

Elsewhere was in Lynchburg, Va., where he would not have to sit out because Liberty is a Division I-AA school.

One wonders why Beecher went on, accepting the humbling demotion from starting quarterback to scout team quarterback.

“I didn’t want my career to end like that,” Beecher said. “There’s a purpose for every person on the team and so I went down to the scout team and just tried to help the defense as much as possible. But I also got a chance to spend a lot of time with the guys and realized that college football is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And why cut it short if you don’t have to?

“I wanted to be part of a team again. And here at Liberty we’ve got a great shot. We’ve got a great team. I think we can make some noise in the Big South this year.”

When he enrolled it presented something of a pleasant dilemma for coach Danny Rocco, who now had two quarterbacks he felt were superior, setting up the dreaded “quarterback controversy.”

Ah, but what if he could use both players?

“We just felt, as we got deeper and deeper into camp, that the best way for us to function and to be efficient on offense was obviously to have our 11 best players out there,” Rocco said. “Tommy Beecher was certainly one of the 11 best players and so was Michael Brown. So it was a pretty clear-cut decision for us in order to get as many weapons on the field as we can.”

The question was how Brown would handle being a receiver, running back and quarterback. You might recall that a number of schools wanted to move Patrick White from quarterback, and that is how WVU landed him, by promising he’d have a chance to play quarterback there.

Brown handled it just fine.

“It was a good, healthy competition that brought out the best in us,” Brown said. “I wanted to do what was best for the team. The switching wasn’t too bad. I played a few games at receiver last year.”

The situation is a good one for Rocco.

“That’s kind of the neat thing about our situation,” Rocco said. “Tommy Beecher can run and Michael Brown can throw. So we have the ability to stay in our base offense with either quarterback in the game.”

It certainly worries West Virginia.

“I see Tommy Beecher. He started at South Carolina and he’s a big guy. Then I see Mike Brown. I don’t know what they would do,” said WVU coach Bill Stewart. “Would you go with Beecher if he has a hot hand and stay with him, or would you pull him out and put that athlete Mike Brown in? Both have a lot that they bring to the table.

“Brown is really a talented athlete and good football player. We will find out where No. 10 is and try to do the best we can.”

Perhaps he can ask Bradley Starks where Brown is. He’ll probably be keeping an eye on him.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.