AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2005 > September > 19
Monday, September 19, 2005
Ball never more wanted
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
After he lost track of downs in Sanford Stadium last November, more than a few Georgia Tech fans wished they could lose sight of Reggie Ball. He’d let them down, they believed, to the dispiriting extent that it was time to try somebody else, anybody else. Indeed, a prominent member of Tech’s athletics department was convinced the upcoming bowl would be Ball’s last collegiate start.
Ten months later, those same people want Reggie Ball to get well this minute. Ten months later, the prevailing belief around Tech is that the Jackets will be hopeless without him. Which only goes to show that fans are exceedingly fickle, which we pretty much knew all along.
“You read some things and you hear some things,” said Ron Gartrell, who coached Ball at Stephenson High. “And one thing Reggie learned when he played quarterback here was that when you win, everything’s great. When you lose, two people are going to get the blame — the quarterback and the coach. And most of the finger-pointing [around Tech] has been at him.”
This isn’t to suggest Ball was faultless. He threw more interceptions than touchdowns his first two seasons. He threw an uncommon number of passes off his back foot. He seemed to regress both fundamentally and tactically the more he played, and that conspicuous blunder against Georgia — to be fair, at least one of Tech’s coaches likewise didn’t know what down it was — seemed something like a last straw. But that’s the thing about sports: They put a guy in position to be roundly condemned, but they also offer the chance at overnight redemption.
Since that fourth down between the hedges, Ball has been terrific. He was MVP of the Champs Sports Bowl. He beat Auburn at Auburn. He threw no interceptions against North Carolina. He reminded everybody just why Chan Gailey had installed Ball as his No. 1 quarterback as a true freshman, benching the incumbent A.J. Suggs to make room. Ball is a great talent. When that talent is harnessed, he’s a very good quarterback.
“He’s showed people this year,” Gartrell said. “He’s very intelligent, and his competitive spirit is so high. My biggest fear was that [public criticism] might deter that. When you get criticized, you can go one of two ways — you can back up, or you can move forward.”
Ball and Tech have moved forward and upward. The Jackets are ranked No. 15 nationally, and with him at peak capacity they would stand a chance of beating No. 4 Virginia Tech in Blacksburg on Saturday. But Ball contracted viral meningitis and spent the weekend in Emory Hospital, and Taylor Bennett’s halting performance against Connecticut was enough to inspire words you thought you’d never hear around The Flats: “We’ve got to get Reggie back!”
It’s not yet clear if Ball will be able to play Saturday, and it’s less clear if he should even try. If you’re sick enough to be hospitalized for more than one night in this era of insurance scrutiny, you’re by definition fairly sick. Gartrell spoke to Ball by phone Sunday, and he offered this status report: “If it’s up to Reggie, he’ll play. But I don’t know if it’s up to Reggie. My personal opinion is that I don’t think he should [play].”
That would be the safer course, and from a purely selfish standpoint it might be the shrewder course. Reggie Ball has started 27 games for Tech, but the one game he missed has sent his popularity soaring to an all-time high. Even in a brute-force endeavor like college football, the old saw cuts deep: Absence really does make the heart grow fonder.
Permalink | Comments (36) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
