Mark Sanchez wants to show he's totally focused on football

If a quarterback sends the wrong message to his receivers, it can cost him the football.

If a quarterback sends the wrong message at this week's NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis, it can cost him $10 million or more.

That's why USC's Mark Sanchez and his handlers are especially careful these days about the signals that he's sending. With the top of the draft still very murky, and Sanchez a legitimate candidate to go No. 1, everything counts -- every impression he leaves, every word he utters, and every minute he spends preparing to wow talent evaluators.

His message: Forget Tinseltown, I'm all about football.

"There's a lot that comes with being an 'SC quarterback," said Sanchez, who was initially reluctant to be interviewed because, he said, he wants to stay under the radar before the combine. "There's Hollywood, there's downtown L.A., there's fun places to go for a young college kid. But at the same time, what's most important to me is being a good football player. I think I learned a lot of that from a guy like Carson Palmer and a lot from J.D. [John David Booty] as well. They've both been hard workers."

Conspicuously absent in that is a mention of Matt Leinart, the Heisman Trophy-winning USC quarterback now holding a clipboard behind Kurt Warner with the Arizona Cardinals. Fair or not, the perception Leinart was Mr. Hollywood not only hurt his draft status -- the onetime potential No. 1 pick slipped to 10th -- but has likewise dogged him in the pros.

"What teams want from a franchise quarterback is, after God and family, football better be next," said Mike Mayock, scouting expert for the NFL Network. "You'd better have a passion for the game of football. . . . I want [Baltimore's Joe] Flacco and [Atlanta's Matt] Ryan, two kids that the day after they had a playoff loss this year were both back in the tape room breaking down tape trying to figure out why.

"I don't want some guy out running the streets chasing starlets. I'm not saying that it's a USC quarterback thing. I'm saying that Matt Leinart may have had a reputation which worked against him and may have borne out a little bit."

Sanchez is especially careful not to criticize Leinart, saying he's "a great football player, and that's going to surface again real soon." But it's clear that Sanchez is determined to distance himself from any suggestion that he's a man about town, or focused on anything but football.