While Va. Tech slips back to mediocrity, (without Bustle) Vick's legacy remains

Rickey Bustle still gets the recruiting tapes in the mail. High school coaches call. Letters are written.

"They'll say, 'Hey, he's like Michael Vick,'" said Bustle, the Louisiana-Lafayette coach. "I put on the film and I just kind of laugh. They just don't know."

No they don't. But Bustle does. As offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Virginia Tech five years ago, he had a ringside seat to a meteor shower. Vick flashed across the sky for two years, led the Hokies to a berth in the national championship game and then was gone a year later to the NFL.

"I'd never had one like him," said Bustle, now in his third season with the Ragin' Cajuns. "That's 20-something years worth. Don't know if I ever will again. I've been around great athletes and great players, but he set a new bar."

Five years ago next month, Vick took his first college snap in what was to be Virginia Tech's best season. An 11-0 regular-season was marred only by a Sugar Bowl loss to Florida State. Neither Virginia Tech nor college football has been able to replace him.

"He changed the game," Hokies coach Frank Beamer said. "We had some good players around him, but he made everybody a little bit better, too."

Almost five years to that fateful day (Sept. 4, 1999), Virginia Tech kicks off its season as a prohibitive underdog to No. 1 USC Saturday in Landover, Md. Whether it will ever get back to those heady Vick days is secondary to a larger question: Will the college game see such an influential quarterback again any time soon?

"I really think that a lot of people started approaching the quarterback philosophy a little bit different (because of Vick)," Bustle said. "I've seen many times a kid that can get out of trouble, create some things, move around more. That kind of opened a lot of people's eyes that things don't always have to be perfect for guys to make a play."

Why think the position -- Vick's body told us -- when you can improvise? Playing quarterback instinctively went against the instincts of almost every coach.

"At first, they kind of threw a net over him and not let him play," Bustle said of Atlanta, where Vick now plays. "All the sudden last year, I'm watching him run three quarterback draws in about eight plays. I'm looking at him running on fourth-and-1 and they're running him just like we did. All these NFL gurus telling me he wasn't going to be able to do this and that. ... He just plays."

There was, and is, the Vick Flick (from a magical left arm), the running moves of Barry Sanders and a charisma that is still being milked by his shoe company and the NFL as a top marketing tool.

"You can see what Nike pays him, they're not crazy," said Bob Johnson, director of the Elite 11 Quarterback Camp in Southern California. "He's something very, very special when the ball is in his hand. He's a joy to watch. You better stay on your toes."

The rest of the story