Winter nearly ends Mallett's career before it starts
Living in Texarkana, Texas, Ryan Mallett actually loved snow.
It was a rarity. A treat, even.
A little white stuff is fun when you're living in a Southern state that gets seven or eight months of sunshine.
Two feet of snow, with temperatures in the single digits, a class halfway across the University of Michigan campus, and no coat?
Well, that might drive you right back to Texarkana, and the case of Ryan Mallett, the top quarterback recruit in the country last fall, it pretty much almost did. That winter day, with the combination of snow, temperature and distance, was the low point of Ryan Mallett's first semester at Michigan, a period in which he left high school early to enroll in January classes and then fought homesickness and the weather for months.
"I was, like: 'Wow, are you serious?' '' Ryan Mallett said Saturday, laughing at the memory. "We don't get much snow (in Texas), so I loved it. I come up here, and it's every day. My goodness.
"The weather's gotten a lot better, obviously. That's always good. It brings everybody's mood up. When I first came here, I thought everybody was real sad, but I think it was the weather. Everybody was just real cold. It makes you not want to talk.''
Ryan Mallett talked during a break in Saturday's Carr's Wash for Kids at Michigan Stadium, a wet towel tucked under the baseball cap on his head, the sleeves on his Michigan football T-shirt rolled up in the heat of a bright sun.
He's past the homesickness now, he insisted.
But, yeah, it was bad.
Bad enough for him to think about transferring home and attending the University of Arkansas, which basically confirmed all of the Internet message board rumors that had Michigan fans worrying all winter and spring.
The Wolverine faithful had company in Schembechler Hall.
"Yeah!'' Michigan coach Lloyd Carr said Saturday when asked if he was worried about losing Mallet. "His parents and high school coach were supportive, but he had a case of homesickness that was very, very difficult.''
It's something every freshman goes through to some extent, Mallet insisted.
And he's right about that, mostly.
But the special circumstances of football and Ryan Mallett's lack of familiarity with Michigan winters certainly conspired against him more than most kids. Like a few high-profile recruits a year, he enrolled in January to get a jump on both classes and football.
That might help him contribute to the team this fall, and even graduate on time, but it's a somewhat socially isolating experience.
"I would call my mom like every night, and a lot of my friends, too,'' Ryan Mallett said. "I was still supposed to be in high school. It would have been different if my friends were in college and going through the same thing. But, all my friends were going to the movies and prom ...''
Then there was the coat thing.
As crazy as it sounds, Ryan Mallett came to Ann Arbor without a winter coat. He meant to buy one, but when he didn't initially find one that was big enough, he tried to get through winter with multiple layers of sweatshirts.
Get a big ol' jacket, and you'll be fine, teammate Carlos Brown, a Georgia native, told him.
So eventually, Ryan Mallett did.
His mom told him to quit being a baby (tough love, he said, but what he needed).
And the weather started to get nicer, the routine started to get more familiar and his teammates kept trying to break him out of a funk that had him, at one point, basically not talking to anybody for two weeks.
"A lot of the coaches mess with me about it now,'' Ryan Mallett said. "Man, you wouldn't talk to anybody for like two weeks! We all laugh about it now. All the players say: 'You'll get over it.' I was like, yeah, I understand that, I'm just not over it yet.''
Then he went back home for prom, where a funny thing happened.
"It was so weird, going back to prom,'' he said. "I was like, wow, this is kinda not my scene anymore. I felt real old.''
No, his scene is here, and he knew it.
That much was obvious Saturday - probably much to the disappointment of some still-holding-out-hope Arkansas fans - as Ryan Mallett clowned around with his teammates, the water flying, as they washed cars for charity Saturday.
Ryan Mallett isn't going anywhere.
The winter was hard, he said, but it will be worth it come fall, when he'll be the primary backup to veteran quarterback Chad Henne next fall.
Should Henne get hurt, Michigan could be - probably even would be - Ryan Mallett's team.
At which point he'd learn another lesson - that the cold of an Ann Arbor winter is nothing compared to the heat of the fall, at least if you're the Michigan quarterback.
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