WVU’s White a step above the rest

Pitt fans, take a deep breath. You deserve it. On Friday afternoon, your Pitt football team… Pitt fans, take a deep breath. You deserve it. On Friday afternoon, your Pitt football team escaped with a win against West Virginia. Even more than that, it escaped from Pat White, who might be the best dual-threat quarterback ever to play college football. Thankfully for you, he’ll never turn the Heinz Field turf into a track again. Don’t think he’s the best? At least look at the numbers. White’s 4,385 yards rushing is more than any quarterback in NCAA history. He has more than double the yards on the ground of any other Big East quarterback in history, and he has put together five of the conference’s six best rushing performances from a quarterback. Only Michael Vick, who played at Virginia Tech, makes the list with White. Vick’s 210 yards against Boston College in 2000 lands him fourth on that list. White has three performances that beat it, and two of them are against Pitt (220 yards in both 2005 and 2006). What’s there to take from that? White runs like he has a motor lodged in his colon. He has four 200-yard rushing games to his name. Most quarterbacks don’t have 200 yards total rushing in their careers. He’s scored 47 touchdowns on the ground and 52 through the air, giving him 99 overall. Next week against South Florida, he’ll certainly eclipse the century mark. Pitt tailback LeSean McCoy calls White one of the most athletic players he’s ever seen. Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt says the same. ‘My hat is off to him,’ said Wannstedt. ‘The guy is the best spread-option quarterback in the country.’ Maybe he’s even better than that. Just look at his success with West Virginia. With White as a starter, the Mountaineers are 32-8. They’ve also won three consecutive New Year’s Day bowls. In 2006, he helped the Mountaineers beat Georgia. In 2007, they beat Georgia Tech. Last year, he gave a 48-28 spanking to Oklahoma. White is also the Big East career leader in touchdowns. He was the Big East’s offensive player of the year in 2006 and 2007. In West Virginia’s matchup against Louisville the weekend before the Pitt game, White put together 322 total yards and scored five touchdowns. And Louisville isn’t that bad. Sure, Pitt found a way to stop White the last two seasons with great defensive game plans. On Friday, Pitt kept him to 93 yards on the ground and intercepted two of his passes. In last year’s win in Morgantown, White missed more than half the game with a thumb injury and couldn’t find a way to be effective when he returned. That doesn’t take away from what he’s done with the Mountaineers. It also doesn’t take away from his first two years against Pitt, when he made the Panthers’ defense look like it belonged in a circus. It’ll be interesting to see what White’s role will be next year in the NFL. He’s a lock for the draft, but he says he wants to play quarterback. Is there room in the NFL for a run-first, pass-second kind of guy? Louisville coach Steve Kragthorpe told the AP that White might be a successful NFL quarterback if he’s in the right system. Greg Robinson, who coached Syracuse this year and has NFL coaching experience, said White has the tools. It’s tough to say. There’s been talk about White’s size ‘mdash; how he might not be able to take the physicality in the NFL or how he’s not a good enough passer to make it at the next level. None of that really matters. At this point, whether you love him or hate him, White is the best dual-threat quarterback in college football. He might even be the best in college football history. Pitt fans should be happy they’ve seen the last of him. -Agree? Disagree? E-mail Mike at sports@pittnews.com