COMMENTARY

By Jim Litke

updated 10:48 a.m. ET Jan. 9, 2006

Jim Litke

LOS ANGELES - Every weekend, it seemed, brought a reason to write about somebody else.

Meanwhile, Vince Young kept mowing down opponents, 20 in a row now.

He began the regular season with a laugher over Louisiana-Lafayette, confirmed his quality with a comeback at Ohio State, shredded the doubts with a beatdown of archrival Oklahoma, then tied it all up neatly with a devastating showing against Southern California in a Rose Bowl title match for the ages.

Week after week, there was no doubt he made for great copy back in Texas.

Yet somehow, somebody else’s story always seemed to be better.

USC quarterback Matt Leinart returned to school, passing up certain millions from the NFL, to take a class in ballroom dancing and keep his eligibility long enough to make a run at an unprecedented third straight national championship. Then Notre Dame came back. And Joe Paterno brought Penn State back. And through it all, the Trojan’s other shimmering star, Reggie Bush, was transcendent — here, there and everywhere.

It’s Young, hands down.

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By such a wide margin, in fact, that he’s too good to stick around for another victory lap. Even if he is a junior, and even if there’s a class available in the Texas two-step.

Young made it official Sunday, announcing he would turn pro. There’s nothing left to prove, at least not in the college game.

Young would have been a prohibitive favorite to avenge the only setback he’s suffered in some time — losing the Heisman Trophy to Bush. He could get stronger, smarter and have a lot more fun staying wrapped in the protective cocoon that coach Mack Brown has designed at Texas. And there’s the added motivation, as Young himself noted Thursday, of “helping the next guy” who will try to step into his oversized cleats.

“Basically, you can get better all the time,” he added, and those words hung in the air for only a few moments before Texas offensive coordinator Greg Davis confirmed them.

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He noted Young had made a quantum leap in his decision-making abilities between last season and this one, but that there was another “huge jump” to be made in the near future.

“Quicker decisions, for one,” Davis said, reading off a laundry list he carried in his head. “He needs to get more comfortable in the pocket, he needs to work on his play-action, his ball-handling ...”

Somehow, though, the longer Davis’ list got, the more you wondered whether he watched the same game the rest of us did the night before.

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