joober jones said:
I like Boat - a lot. That being said, he needs to put in an excellent senior year to be considered for Husky of Honor status.
There's Husky of Honor status (formal, with capital H's, hanging on the wall) and Husky of honor status (informal, lower case h), which we can say means beloved/fondly remembered by our fan base. There are a lot of guys in both categories, of course, but there are the Ricky Moores, Kevin Freemans, Rashad Andersons, Nadav Henefelds, Lyman DePriests, etc who will always be in the lower case h category. Ricky doesn't have to be on no stinkin' wall after 1999. I think Boat earned his lower case h last year (following the Ricky path of being maligned for a while - then playing his way into beloved status).
There's a risk of playing your way out, which has happened to a few guys like Boone and Oriakhi - perhaps Lamb and Burrell (his senior year). Sticks maybe went in as a junior and out as his senior year unravelled. Donyell unfairly lost his lower case h with a lot of people in a span of 10 seconds. MW fairly lost his with many in June.
I think Boat will stay in as long as he plays with the same heart and leaves it all out there trying to repeat, but there's a risk. If we have a bad year where we feel rudderless, it'll fall on him and he'll be held to the Kemba/Bazz legacy standard. I'd like to think time will allow him to keep his lower case h no matter what - he stuck with the program through dark times, transformed into Ricky to get us #4 (and transformed into Khalid on a big possession), really matured before our eyes, etc. But we are a fickle lot.