The No. 1 overall pick in next year's NFL draft could have played tennis. You don't know his name yet -- not all of you, anyway -- but he's the same age as Venus Williams, and he grew up in Compton, and, when he was 10, Venus's father recruited him.

"Let your boy play tennis," Venus's father said to the boy's father. "He's one hell of an athlete."

"I think he'd rather play football," the boy's father said.

"There's a lot of money out there on the tour," Venus's father said.

"Really?" the boy's father said.

"And there ain't many of us out there, either," Venus's father said.

Or the No. 1 overall pick in next year's NFL draft could have played basketball. He grew six inches between the 6th and 7th grades, and that got him to 6'1". And by high school, he was 6'4" and impossible to box out. His sophomore year, he was the best player on a championship team, and the second-best player's name happened to be Tayshaun Prince. The one who's now at Kentucky.

Or the No. 1 overall pick in next year's NFL draft could have stuck with track and field. He threw the discus and the shot put in high school, and he also used to race his older sister. The same older sister who would end up being a hurdler at the 2000 Olympic Trials. And guess who'd win: Him.

Or the No. 1 overall pick in next year's NFL draft could've been an offensive lineman. That's where his father -- who just so happened to be his Pop Warner football coach -- used to position him. He wanted to humble his boy, stick him in the trenches, get his mouthpiece dirty. Besides, his boy had a king-sized body, even at 11, and could take out two defenders every play. The only problem was, the boy had trouble making weight. So his father put him on a no-sugar diet, and the boy would make a cape out of plastic garbage bags and wear it under his sweat clothes. And then he'd ride a stationary bike with the heat on and the window shut -- just to drop the necessary pounds. His Pop Warner teammates would watch his weigh-ins, and pray. If he'd make weight, they'd throw their helmets in the air.

Or the No. 1 overall pick in next year's NFL draft could have stayed at USC. "Best high school football player I've ever seen," says Hue Jackson, the former Trojan assistant who first recruited him. But USC ran him off the team. Not intentionally, but they ran him out.

It's simple, really. The No. 1 overall pick in next year's draft had always wanted to do one thing and one thing only: play quarterback. Richard Williams wanted him to play tennis, and Tayshaun Prince wanted him to play basketball, and his sister wanted him to win a gold medal, and USC wanted him to play tight end or linebacker or return punts. But someone by the name of Jason Thomas -- okay, now you know his name -- wanted to play quarterback. Quarterback or bust.

So this is how it goes sometimes. This is how it goes when you're 6'4", 235 pounds and black, and you ask to play quarterback. The coach back then at USC, Paul Hackett, didn't believe in him enough. Wasn't patient enough. Hackett came to USC out of the NFL, came to a West Coast school with the West Coast offense, and didn't realize exactly what he had. One of his quarterbacks was Carson Palmer, a typical drop-back passer, a clone of what Hackett was used to coaching. And the other QB was a raw Jason Thomas, who was coming off of a serious high school leg injury. Naturally, he was going to play Palmer at first -- while Thomas healed up -- but he should've coached Thomas extra after practice, should've made him feel more a part of it, shouldn't have ignored him, should've realized this kid had a rocket left arm to go with his escapability, should've realized this was a future first overall pick.

Instead, Hackett would walk straight by the kid without saying a word. Or he'd urge him to switch positions. And so that's how he unintentionally ran Jason Thomas out of USC, and that's one more reason why Hackett is not the head coach today at USC. "Got what he deserved," says Jason's father, Charles.

But this is how it goes sometimes, and all Jason Thomas really needed was someone who could see what Richard Williams saw -- that this kid could do whatever he wanted. Too tall? So what. Too big? So what? Too black? So what.

So he is at UNLV now, under a grateful man named John Robinson, and you are going to hear about Thomas every weekend, starting next week. You are going to hear about a quarterback who took UNLV from 0-11 to a bowl game, who went 12 of 17 (with four drops) in the bowl victory over Arkansas. You will hear about a quarterback who has the size of Daunte Culpepper, and the speed of Donovan McNabb, and the running instinct of Steve Young. He is a junior, but he is on schedule to graduate next summer, and the way I figure it, it'll end up being a no-brainer for him to declare for next year's draft.

If it's me, I pick him first.

Hackett picked him second, and look what happened to him.

Tom Friend is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at tom.friend@espnmag.com.