The young quarterback rolled out and found himself, quite suddenly, alone. No linemen blocking, no receiver breaking open, only tacklers bearing down.
At that point, UCLA freshman Richard Brehaut realized he had turned right when the play was supposed to go left. It was only practice, but coaches pulled him off the field, yelling.
"I screwed up," he said. "They got on me real good."
Across town at USC, another new quarterback faced a subtler "Welcome to College" moment when he showed up for his first off-season meeting in January and looked around the room at older, larger players, some of them headed for the NFL next year.
"I don't want to say it's intimidating," Matt Barkley recalled, "but you're with a bunch of men."
At a time of life when most of their peers are cruising through the final, breezy days of high school, Brehaut and Barkley have chosen a different route, pounding the books at college and dodging 280-pound linemen on the football field.
They belong to a rare but growing breed -- informally called "greenshirts" -- who finish their senior year early so they can enter college at midterm and join their new teams in time for spring practice. NCAA rules allow them to participate in scrimmages and months of off-season conditioning before the August date when freshmen usually report for training camp.
USC Coach Pete Carroll has watched the idea gain traction, which makes him wonder.
"I don't try to talk guys into it," he said. "I kind of go the other way."
Carroll sees a trade-off: Young players gain football experience at the expense of memorable moments such as their prom or a few more months with childhood friends.
"Things that happen at the end of their senior year only happen once," he said. "And even if it isn't important to the kid, it's important to the family."
For many years, only a trickle of recruits arrived on campus ahead of schedule. According to an annual USA Today survey, there were 15 early enrollees at the 66 biggest football schools in 2002. But that number has risen, hitting 105 last year. This winter, preliminary tracking by the scouting website Rivals.com counted at least 103 greenshirts. The expectation is that this year's total will surpass 2008's.
The list includes blue-chip prospects such as Texas offensive lineman Mason Walters and Michigan defensive tackle William Campbell, as well as numerous top quarterbacks: Russell Shepard at Louisiana State, Cody Green at Nebraska, and Zach Mettenberger and Aaron Murray at Georgia.
