The playbook, he’s got. What Trey White needs most right now is a thesaurus.
Kennesaw State’s first quarterback — the Christopher Columbus, the Neil Armstrong, the Catherine of Aragon (Henry VIII’s first) of the Owls’ offense, however you want to look at it — finally can see the field from here. Full-boogie practice began Saturday. An actual football game against strangers, East Tennessee State, looms in just more than a month.
“We get to play the first game ever — that’s what we’re all excited about. I don’t know how many times we can say excited,” he said.
“But we’re excited.”
Regardless of scale, college football programs all over are awakening. In southern climes, the beginning of practice is greeted with the kind of glee reserved for the newborn. Nothing like the violent crack of armored bodies colliding to signal fresh beginnings.
For White, this is a particularly noteworthy time. After a year preparing for the start-up KSU program to lurch to life, after earning the starter’s job with a sharp spring, he can begin to treat football as a reality again rather than a distant concept.
And for White, it has been a particular eternity between now and his last real etched-in-stone game. Go further back than just last season, when there was only practice at KSU, but no games yet. There was the season before, too, when he was a redshirt freshman at The Citadel. His last real snap was 2012, as a senior in high school at St. Pius.
He thinks he remembers how to play. “I better, or I’m in trouble.”
“I don’t think I lost anything. When the bullets are flying, I’m ready to go,” he declared.
Givens are in short supply around a first-year program, and, accordingly, White’s place running the triple option comes with no lasting guarantee. Owls coach Brian Bohannon has said there will be constant competition for the position. He’s open to any QB or combination of QBs that will give meaning to his offense. Everything’s fluid.
Still, there can forever be only one first quarterback. For the time being, White is a face of a largely faceless program, one of the more prominent members on a team without resume.
“I’m definitely glad to be an Owl,” he said, pausing for affect.
“Ain’t that a hoot?”
For the marketing duty, he has the perfect personality. “A very charismatic guy. We go at it back and forth pretty good all the time,” Bohannon said.
At 22, he’s a veritable sage among this bunch. “We call him, ‘Dad,’” defensive back Taylor Henkle said as he smiled.
White also is a spokesman for an entire first generation of Owls who ventured away from home only to transfer back, seeking a haven where they might actually play. There is a baker’s dozen of such transfers who have returned home to launch themselves into the great unknown with Kennesaw State.
Going to the military-oriented Citadel may have had some benefits for White — “It’s one of the things that make me the player I am now. I’m a tough player and I think some of that toughness came from the Citadel,” he said. But one of those benefits did not include the likelihood of playing time.
Bohannon was happy to take on a fellow with his experience running the option — that’s what White ran at St. Pius, where his younger brother, Ben, is a quarterback. With Bohannon’s many years working under Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson, you would not expect him to open up in the spread.
“This has been a second chance for him and a great opportunity for us as well with his background in option football,” Bohannon said. “It has been huge for him to come in. He’s a little older. He’s been around the block a little bit, and that helps with a really young football team.”
It didn’t take White long at all to pick up on a few of the pleasant differences between KSU and his last address.
“I’m very thankful to have hair. That’s a plus,” he said. The cadet arrives at the Citadel and gets shaved to the roots.
“And having some girls on campus is definitely a nice change-up.”
As far as the football side of the college experience, that has been a little weird.
There was the matter of killing of an entire year between when he signed and the prospect of playing a game. “It’s been hard, especially for me. I’m very intense and emotional,” he said. Indeed, Bohannon already has perfected one hand signal for his quarterback — arms extended, palms out, meaning whoa, whoa, settle down.
And White acknowledges that stepping out as a leader has been a little challenging, given that he is just as unproven as everyone else on the roster.
One trait that most certainly would earn the appreciation of all his fellow Owls, one that gave him the initial leg-up at quarterback: “He’s hard to tackle,” Bohannon said.
“He’ll miss a read or mess up a play then go break three tackles and have a great play. He’s finding ways to make plays when things don’t go like they’re supposed to, and that’s important for us right now,” he added.
You think you are ready to chew through some drywall waiting for the college football season to start?
Imagine wanting to be in the middle of it, healthy and strong and looking for a tackle to break only to be confined to a waiting room for more than two years.
“I kind of miss the feeling of waking up feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck,” White laughed.
And, then, more seriously, “I think about (next month’s first snap) a lot. All I can envision now is the place is going to be packed, and hopefully it’s a great game and we can be prepared for it.
“That’s my biggest fear now. We have so many underclassmen and transfers. We have this band of brothers that we’ve built. Now can we go into camp, can we all work toward our common goal and be as prepared as we can for our first game?”
Yeah, he’s excited.
