Photo: #12 J.C. Lewis
By JOSEPH SCHIEFELBEIN, Advocate sportswriter
There’s a redshirt sophomore running Southern’s offense these days, and Bryant Lee has shown he can be a pretty good one.
The thing is, though, the last guy to start as a redshirt sophomore, J.C. Lewis, can tell him all about how uncertain the road can be.
Lewis — a fifth-year senior known as “Sunshine” after the cool, California quarterback in “Remember the Titans” — walked into coach Pete Richardson’s office and called it a career Monday.
It’s a sad ending. It’s life. It’s football.
He finished as SU’s sixth-best passer all-time. And like Lee, Lewis once had so much going for him. Early last year, Lewis seemed a shoe-in to make the top two on that all-time list, behind Eric Randall.
First, the overtime disaster to Prairie View and a concussion/five-interception loss to North Carolina Central. Lewis, out for two games, started just one more game, in November against Texas Southern, but his last play came as he lowered his throwing shoulder on a block and got hurt. Lee has since become the starter.
So, after watching from the sideline for two games, Lewis went to see Richardson on Monday.
Said Lewis, “It was hard. Coach told me he appreciated the time I was here. It was more kind of a mutual thing. I guess he was kind of sad for me to go, but he also respected my decision to go.”
Said Richardson, “I’m kind of proud he made a decision he felt comfortable with.”
Lewis — who came to SU in June 2003 on a Monday after graduating that Friday — missed a lot of spring practice to finish his bachelor’s degree in mathematics in May. Then he spent the summer working for his mom’s real estate investment company in Houston.
He said he thought about not returning this fall, but when he was accepted to graduate school in mathematics, he came back.
But then his classes are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and conflicted with quarterbacks meetings.
“Eventually, that was going to put me further and further behind,” Lewis said.
Lewis has done what his parents insisted: gotten a degree and starting on another, while on scholarship.
“It really just came down to I just wasn’t going to play at all,” said Lewis, who will now sit down with his parents and talk about the future this weekend. “For me to play, two guys in front of me had to get hurt or we had to be doing really bad. I felt it was time for me to move on.”
Lewis also has done all a school can ask as well. He’ll be remembered for his coolness — as in easy-going, likeable and hard-to-rattle. Teammates named him a co-captain entering last season.
He’ll also be remembered for taking vicious blows (28 sacks in a nine-game 2005 season) that made Richardson, even after a lifetime around the game, wince. The elbow. The ribs. The shoulder. And most importantly, the noggin. Hits add up.
Lewis, who still throws a pretty ball, picked the right time to leave the pocket for good. The thing is, though, new days come, no matter how fondly the days of Sunshine are remembered.
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