Alabama's John Parker Wilson has endured through heavy criticism

John Parker Wilson faced plenty of heat in the past, but he's currently quarterbacking the nation's No. 1 team. Greg Nelson/SI Andy Staples's Mailbag Have questions or feedback? E-mail Andy Staples. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Andy Staples on Twitter

A boy, no older than 5 or 6, stood close to his father and gawked at the floppy-haired young man towering over him in an elevator in a suburban Atlanta hotel on the morning of Sept. 27. After a few seconds of awed silence, the boy's father spoke to the young man.

"John Parker," the father said. "Can you give him five?"

Alabama senior quarterback John Parker Wilson, only a few hours away from taking the field against Georgia in Athens, smiled. He slapped five with the young Crimson Tide fan and said a few kind words before reaching his floor and stepping out. As the elevator doors closed, the boy's father turned to his friend.

"Now, if he could just throw the deep ball," the father said.

Such is life for Wilson, the quarterback who will lead top-ranked Alabama into Baton Rouge on Saturday to face No. 15 LSU in the Tide's final major test before the Dec. 6 SEC title game. Alabama fans love him now, because he has piloted the Tide with ruthless efficiency -- picking his spots to unleash his arm while allowing the defense, the offensive line and a deep stable of backs to set the tone. Still, it hasn't even been a year since those same fans cursed his name, or worse, mocked it with comparisons to a certain Manolo Blahnik-wearing starlet. On Third Saturday in Blogtober, a Bama fan who calls himself Crimson Daddy used to file posts about the quarterback under the name "Sarah Jessica Parker Wilson."

Before this season, some Bama fans' enduring image of Wilson's first two years as a starter came from last season's LSU game. Facing a third-and-12 from the Alabama 30 with the scored tied at 34 late in the fourth quarter, Wilson dropped back and LSU safety Chad Jones exploded through an opening in the line. Wilson tried desperately to secure the football before Jones flung him down, but the ball squirted loose. LSU recovered on the Alabama 3, and an easy Jacob Hester touchdown run kept the Tigers' national title run alive.

Or maybe those fans fully formed their opinion two weeks later, when Wilson's third-down incompletion sealed a home loss to lowly Louisiana-Monroe. The WarHawks didn't commit a turnover that day; Wilson threw two interceptions.

Andrew Zow can imagine how Wilson probably felt after the Tide dropped their final four regular-season games and Wilson's critics multiplied. As an Alabama quarterback from 1998-2001, Zow experienced the high (the 1999 SEC title) and the low (a 3-7 record in 2000 that got coach Mike DuBose fired). And as much as a quarterback may try to insulate himself from the barbs, Zow said, it's not possible.

"You feel all of it," said Zow, who wrote a book about his Alabama career and who now coaches at his alma mater, Union County High in Lake Butler, Fla. "You think that a lot of it is your fault."

Even though Alabama's struggles weren't all Wilson's fault, it didn't matter. Jay Barker, the last quarterback to lead Alabama to a national title in 1992, acknowledged that the quarterback receives a disproportionate amount of praise and blame on any football team. But in Tuscaloosa, he said, the pendulum between the two swings more wildly than anywhere else.

"The four most powerful people in the state of Alabama in a given year," Barker said, "are the coach at Alabama, the Auburn coach, the quarterback at Alabama and the quarterback at Auburn."

So as the third-most important person in his state, Wilson had to stay tough. He couldn't complain that some of his 2007 teammates didn't have the will to win that he had. He couldn't explain that he sometimes tried to force passes because he felt, at times, that he had to do everything. He just had to keep his mouth shut and endure.

Wilson tried to avoid the critics as much as possible. In an April interview, he said he had one criterion when choosing radio or television programming to watch. "Anything but Alabama football," he said.