Big Ten's cloud of dust has been lifted

Pat Fitzgerald has plenty to worry about as a Big Ten football coach, but he insists that quarterbacking isn't one of them. "Having a Heisman Trophy candidate come back at quarterback for us," the Northwestern coach said of senior Dan Persa, who is recovering from November Achilles' surgery, "is something that gives me a little bit of extra sleep at night."

Heisman, huh? You have to appreciate that kind of optimism at a school that's never had a player who won the big trophy. And Persa figures to have plenty of competition, right in his own neighborhood.

Terrelle Pryor has been mentioned on Heisman watch lists since he was a sophomore, though his candidacy as an Ohio State senior figures to be scuttled by a five-game suspension to start the season. Denard Robinson was the Heisman frontrunner a month into last season, before an overmatched defense doomed Michigan to a mediocre season.

What do all these Cam Newton wannabes have in common? They're all quarterbacks who are as big a threat with their legs as they are with their arms. And they all play in the former home of stodgy, corn-fed, 3-yards-at-a-time plow-horse offenses: the Big Ten.

"Things have changed," said Illinois coach Ron Zook, and he's one of the guys who is changing it. As college football teams finish evaluating their returning players in spring football this month, more than half of the Big Ten's 12 teams appear committed to a do-it-yourself ground-gainer at quarterback.

"It's funny. If you look around the country, the Big Ten may have the most athletic quarterbacks of anyone," said Illinois' Nathan Scheelhaase, who finished second in rushing on the Illini behind tailback Mikel Leshoure. "I don't know whether it's a coincidence or not that we all fell into the Big Ten Conference at the same time."

Including Taylor Martinez of Nebraska, which joins the Big Ten this summer, there are six returning quarterbacks who gained at least 50 yards per game on the ground a year ago:

• Pryor, the Buckeyes' second-leading rusher, picking up 58 yards per Saturday.

• Martinez, whose 74 yards per game is the most by any returning Cornhuskers player.

• Scheelhaase, whose eye-opening freshman season at Illinois included 66 yards per game on the ground, most of any returning Illini.

• Rob Henry, whose 50-yard average last year was higher than any Purdue running back.

• And of course Robinson, who led the entire Big Ten in rushing with 131 yards per game and 14 rushing touchdowns.

"It's kind of been an ongoing [evolution] in college football, as far as having athletic quarterbacks. It's all over the country," not just in the Big Ten, said Henry, just a sophomore.

"Look at the two teams in the national championship last year -- both of those teams had athletic quarterbacks," Henry said, citing Auburn's Newton and Oregon's Darron Thomas. "So I think it's a trend you're seeing as people look for ways to score points. They're trying to spread the defense out, and let the playmakers make plays."

That's the Gophers' intent, too, in shifting Gray back to the position he played in high school. "We're going to do a lot of things with the ball, and it starts with the quarterback," new Minnesota coach Jerry Kill said shortly after being hired. "He can see where the holes are. The more things you can do, the bigger variety [of ways] you have to attack a defense, the easier it is to move the ball."

And score. Scheelhaase ran for scores five times last year, and believes he can improve on that number this year.

"There's a lot more I can do as far as breaking tackles on the second level, making guys miss. I think that would be huge for our offense," the sophomore-to-be said. "It's crazy to look back on the film of all my runs last year, and think if I make one more guy miss, it's seven points on the board."

"Danny will be the first to say that he learned some valuable lessons last year. He took some unnecessary hits," Fitzgerald said of Persa, who believes he will be completely healthy by fall practice. "The season is going to be a meat-grinder."