ESPN College Football

Posted by ESPN.com's Ted Miller

UCLA quarterback Kevin Prince stayed after practice a lot last year. He wanted extra time to throw and ask questions. Lots of questions.

Throw. Ask questions. Physical. Mental. A good way for a quarterback to get noticed.

Ask Prince about UCLA's anemic offense in 2008, and he talks about the little things. A missed block here. A hurried pass there. A poor read. Bad execution.

Ask him if he thought he could have been the solution and the redshirt freshman bluntly says... probably not.

"I was kind of overwhelmed by the system and everything I had to know and I hadn't played football for a while because of my [knee injury suffered his senior year of high school]," he said. "I don't know if I would have been ready last year, to tell you the truth."

Prince sounds measured and thoughtful beyond his years. He, in fact, sounds like a coach at times.

Based only on the way he carries himself, it's not hard to see why his coaches did little to tamp down the widely held perception that Prince was the frontrunner to win the Bruins quarterback job before spring practices began, even though he'd not played a down of college football.

Then, when Prince began throwing, he only solidified that perception.

He's got the best arm among UCLA's quarterbacks. He's been the most accurate passer. He's started to assert himself in the huddle.

Some observers believe he's already won the starting job.

Prince isn't taking anything for granted, but, yes, he has noticed a firm pecking order with him ahead of true freshman Richard Brehaut and returning starter Kevin Craft.

"I've been taking the first-team reps and I feel like I've done a pretty good job so far," he said "Obviously, there's so much more to work on, so much to get better at. I'd like to think that I'm leading but you can never be complacent. That's another thing [offensive coordinator Norm Chow] talks about."

Chow's Yoda-like reputation obviously has Prince's complete attention. Chow has built successful offenses based on superior quarterback play at every coaching stop -- other than, perhaps, the Tennessee Titans -- so Prince seems eager learn from the Jedi Master.

"He's easy to talk to about anything and he's very wise," Prince said. "Whenever he says something, you know it's going to be useful. On the field, he's a great teacher. He gets intense, which is kind of funny because you wouldn't expect it when you talk to him off the field because he's so mellow. I like working with him because he's done this so many times that he knows everything you are going through."

Prince, a 2008 signee, was originally scheduled to grayshirt -- delay his enrolment until this spring -- because of his knee injury, but that plan changed when Ben Olson and Pat Cowan both got hurt on the same day of spring practices last year. Prince also was expected to take a two-year Mormon mission.

His quick ascension in Westwood has changed that plan.

"[An LDS mission] is something I want to do, but right now I don't see it happening for a while," he said. "I want to be able to play football while I can. I'm thinking sometime after my career is over."

Prince, who calls himself a "semi-mobile quarterback," isn't a finished product. He mostly played in a shotgun offense at Crespi High School in Encino, Calif., so he's still learning to run a pro-style scheme from under center.

All signs, however, point to Prince starting the Bruins opener against San Diego State, and then taking the field a week later in front of 107,000 orange-clad crazies at Tennessee.

The last time a Chow-tutored quarterback made his first road start at an SEC power, Matt Leinart led the Trojans to a 23-0 bludgeoning of sixth-ranked Auburn.

But that's a lot of extra throws and questions away.