Few things in sports can divide a room quicker than a quarterback controversy. Buckle up Baton Rouge — the battle for LSU’s starting quarterback job heated up on a chilly Saturday afternoon and isn’t likely to cool down anytime soon.
Throughout the spring practice season — and really since he led the miraculous last-minute drive to beat Arkansas last November  — it’s felt like a foregone conclusion the job belonged to sophomore Anthony Jennings.
With his Outback Bowl struggles in the rearview, most of the talk this spring has centered around Jennings taking the reins of the offense and growing into a leader in the huddle. LSU coach Les Miles said repeatedly that early enrollee Brandon Harris has provided “competition” to Jennings, but it’s never really felt like one.
Following that script, Saturday’s annual spring game was set to be a public coronation of Jennings as LSU’s quarterback. Instead, it heated up the competition that could come to define LSU football during the coming seasons.
Jennings was brutal on Saturday. His intermediate-to-deep throws were wobbly and inaccurate and he looked uncomfortable in the pocket. Despite his athleticism, he was sacked four times.
To punctuate the afternoon, Jennings threw not one, but two ugly interceptions on lazy passes in the flats, both of which were returned by linebackers for easy touchdowns. The pair of pick sixes reminded everyone in attendance of Jarrett Lee circa 2008 — not ideal for someone trying to nail down a job.
By comparison, Harris was a rock star. He overcame his own slow start to toss three touchdowns and run for another, looking more like a calm veteran when pressure came than a guy who was in high school five months earlier.
He completed just 11-of-28 passes, but most of them were deep throws down the field. He launched passes into double coverage and most of the bombs fell incomplete, but they looked pretty in the air and the combination of Harris’ cannon and scrambling ability is intriguing.
The offense Harris ran looked familiar to anyone who ever played with Michael Vick in an old Madden NFL video game. LSU sent three receivers deep with one running underneath on just about every play, and then Harris either turned it loose deep or broke the pocket and ran. It’s not an efficient way to play football, but it’s definitely fun to watch.
It doesn’t mean that Harris will or should start ahead of Jennings, but if Jennings struggles in the season-opener against Wisconsin like he did Saturday, expect the chirps to come early and often calling for that-Harris-guy who lit up the spring game.
Miles tried to pre-emptively quell the fire after the spring game, crediting Jennings’ resiliency and pointing out that Harris did make “four, five or six major errors” on Saturday.
“I think some of the big plays Brandon made will be reviewed positively by us, but to say it’s the reason or the spot [Harris made a big move toward the starting job], no,” Miles said. “We’re still a ways away. Again, I think there needs to be improvement at the position by both guys.”
To translate: the spring game is just one small piece of a big puzzle. Unfortunately for Miles and Jennings, it just happens to be the last piece of that puzzle open to the public until an Aug. 30 date with Wisconsin.
It doesn’t matter if Harris’ performance Saturday was an aberration and Jennings has actually outperformed him in every practice so far. Harris’ four-touchdown spring game will be at the forefront of every fan’s mind should Jennings get off to a bad start.
Of course if Miles and offensive coordinator Cam Cameron still believe in Jennings, no amount of fan complaining can force them to make a change. But it’s the natural progression that fan complaints become questions asked by the media to both Miles and his players.
Over time, questions create doubt, and if that doubt penetrates the locker room — and with quarterback controversies, it often does — it can divide a team between supporting one signal caller or the other.
Once that happens, the wildfire spreads far too quickly for Miles or anyone else to extinguish. Again, going back to Lee in 2008, it’s nearly impossible for a young quarterback to play well when fans and teammates don’t have any confidence in you.
But at this point, it should still be considered Jennings’ job to lose. It just might not take too much for him to lose it.
James Moran is a 21-year-old mass communication senior from Beacon, N.Y.