Each year, Greg Biggins and his guys pick 11 promising QB’s from around the nation and bring them together for drills and a frothy public relations concoction. Many of the former OSU aspirants and (and some current chuckers) have been selected. I found this comment recently from Greg on a message board, and thought you would find it, interesting:
Greg Biggins
We have a rule in regards to the Elite 11 QB camp that we won’t ever lock in a QB to the final camp without seeing that player in person. We actually refer to that rule as the Justin Zwick rule in-house and here’s why. Zwick, who plays at Ohio State, was regarded by just about everyone as the top QB prospect in the nation and had 50 plus offers back in the spring of 2002.
This class also featured guys like Ben Olson, Vincent Young and Trent Edwards but Zwick had more offers than all of them. Zwick couldn’t make it to a NIKE camp that year but his film was pretty good and politically, we felt we needed to have him there since he was so ballyhooed. Well, to make a long story longer, Zwick came out and was easily the worst QB we’ve had at any of the Elite 11 camps. The guy just couldn’t play and I told some Ohio St fans/friends I know that if this guy ever played for you, you would be in trouble.
That same year, there was another QB that no one had heard much about, kids name was Troy Smith. At the NIKE camp at Michigan, Drew Stanton was the one everyone talked about before the camp but Smith out-threw him by a wide margin. Even though Smith was 6-0 and in no ones list of top 50 QBs nationally, we locked him in for the camp. Smith had a huge Elite 11 camp and would be offered later on by Ohio State. Everyone said there was no way Smith would go there because of Zwick but Smith had already seen Zwick, competed against him five days straight and knew he would beat him out which he eventually did and had Smith played in the entire Texas game last year, Ohio State likely would have played for the National Championship and not the Horns.
