College Football

Easy Does It
Oklahoma's new quarterback, ever-patient Nate Hybl, isn't taking any chances

Nate Hybl made his first start as Oklahoma quarterback last Saturday, and if Sooners offensive coordinator Mark Mangino had brought him along any more slowly, the junior passer would have been penalized for delay of game. With eight starters returning from a defense that shut out Florida State in the Orange Bowl last season, the Oklahoma coaches weren't expecting Hybl to beat North Carolina single-handedly—and he didn't come close.

In the first half alone the Sooners' defense scored two touchdowns and forced two turnovers inside the Tar Heels' 20-yard line, helping Oklahoma to a 41-27 victory in Norman. On the other hand, the offensive game plan was so conservative it could have come from the White House. Hybl completed 20 of 29 passes for a mere 152 yards and tried to throw downfield only five times. He also made a huge mistake, short-arming a swing pass that North Carolina defensive end Julius Peppers intercepted and returned 29 yards for a touchdown.

Hybl wasn't discouraged by his slow start; after three years at two schools the 22-year-old from Colbert, Ga., understands how to be patient. "I have been waiting awhile," he says. "It made me mature awfully fast."

In January 1998, Hybl graduated early from Jefferson Davis High to enroll for the spring semester at Georgia, where coach Jim Donnan envisioned him as the Bulldogs' quarterback for the following fall. Hybl lost the job the following August, however, to freshman Quincy Carter, who graduated high school in 1996 but signed with the Chicago Cubs and spent two seasons in the minor leagues before opting to play football at Georgia.

" Quincy came in over that summer, and Nate hurt his shoulder and didn't have a very good fall camp," says Donnan, who was fired after last season. Carter played so well as a freshman that Hybl transferred to Oklahoma, where he sat out last season. Mangino says that the 6'3", 215-pound Hybl has a stronger arm than Josh Heupel, the quarterback who led the Sooners to the 2000 national championship. However, anyone who saw the drunken mallards that Heupel threw last year knows that he won games with his head, not his arm. "I learned from Josh's work ethic," Hybl says. "He worked his feet every day. He did continuous film study. You really can't overdo it."

Hybl won the starting job over sophomore Jason White because he read defenses so well in preseason workouts. "He threw one interception in all of camp—seven-on-seven, scrimmages and other drills," Mangino says of Hybl. "That's over 500 throws."

Mangino says he will give Hybl more rope each week. The quarterback is confident and hopes to wind up as something more than the answer to a trivia question: Who is the only current football player to have been on national championship teams in two sports at two Division I schools? A three-time all-state golfer in high school, Hybl was a redshirt freshman on Georgia's 1999 NCAA-champion golf team. "If Nate had concentrated solely on golf, he absolutely could have played at [the Division I] level," says Bulldogs golf coach Chris Haack, who has Nate's younger brother, Ryan, on his team.

Hybl showed last Saturday night that he has a deft short game. The question that remains is, How good is he from a long way out?

Georgia Tech's Kelly Campbell
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