By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — Andy Warhol once told us that everyone has 15 minutes of fame, which would have a whole lot more meaning if he hadn’t also told us a couple of years later that he was bored with that line and was changing it to “in 15 minutes everybody will famous.”
See there was a lot of truth in that original 15 minutes of fame line, but it might be best to put it aside when talking about Geno Smith, the backup West Virginia University quarterback who last weekend came off the bench when Jarrett Brown was injured to lead the Mountaineers to victory over Marshall.
Even if Brown progresses this week to the point where he can take back his starting job when a grieving Connecticut comes to town Saturday, one suspects that Smith will have more than just that Marshall game to lay his claim to fame on at West Virginia.
He has shown himself to be a star waiting to happen.
“We rolled 7s on Geno Smith,” is the way offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen put it.
What he does on the football field was obvious. He was cool. He was calm.
He was clutch.
Fourth and 10, this inexperienced rookie made three reads to find Jock Sanders to complete a 13-yard pass to set up a Noel Devine touchdown run on the next play.
And when West Virginia needed to put the game out of reach, he made an absolutely perfect throw to the deepest part of the end zone to hit Alric Arnett with a 33-yard touchdown.
He wasn’t perfect.
“He made a lot freshman mistakes that you really couldn’t see, “Mullen said. “He has to improve.”
But that he isn’t strutting around campus after being that football hero they talk about in song shows that he understands he has work to do that if indeed all he gets is 15 minutes of fame, that one game represented only a tick or two of the second hand.
You have to understand how difficult it is to do what he did, first of all. As a backup quarterback, you get only about a third of the reps in practice. Therefore, you are only about a third ready come game day.
“That is why backup quarterback is the hardest job there is,” Mullen said. “You can’t go into the batting cage and take some pitches. You just have to go out there and do it.”
And the opposition is ready and willing to test you.
“They blitzed the first couple of plays, like an opponent will do when a new quarterback comes in,” Smith recalled.
They got to him, too. Knocked him around, made him throw incomplete. What they didn’t do was shake him up.
“They tested my toughness,” he said.
They found out he was tough enough.
“You can’t play scared or you won’t be able to play at all,” he said.
To do what Smith has done, come in and put himself in position to win a major college football game within a few months of entering college, you have to be a special kind of person.
Smith is.
“We could not get Geno here in the spring because of his transcript. They wouldn’t put a graduation date on it by the time our school started. He is a good student, very sharp, and had he been here I the spring, he would have been even sharper,” coach Bill Stewart said. “He is a film guy and a gym rat, and that is very good.”
He watches film of himself, of Brown and of other quarterbacks, NFL quarterbacks.
“I don’t emulate them. I don’t have an idol. But I try to take part of each guy. I see how Peyton Manning works on play-action passes and how calm Tom Brady is.”
He certainly seems to have the calmness down, and he says he gets that from his mother, Tracey Sellers.
They have a warm relationship, with her leading him in the right direction.
“When I recruited Geno, his mother or one of his teammate’s mothers picked the two up every day. They did their homework and played football on Play Station,” Stewart said. “Then they ate and went home. Geno has always been a homebody. I don’t like dancers. Those are the kind guys I like to recruit.”
Why would Geno Smith have his mother take him to and from school, especially since he had a car?
“You know, in high school you don’t want to go to school,” he said.
With Mom taking him, he didn’t really have any choice.
Email Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
