Dead heat

• By SCOTT RABALAIS
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Aug 5, 2008 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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The first day of fall football practice is always ripe with storylines as a team begins to ramp up toward a new season.

Rarely though, do any storylines trump that of what’s going on at the quarterback position.

That almost always seems to be the case at LSU, where the quarterback spot is usually dogged by questions at the outset.

This season, the Tigers are starting with a dead heat — and then some.

The men who would be quarterback — sophomore Andrew Hatch and redshirt freshman Jarrett Lee — worked out Monday morning in the reigning BCS national champion’s first preseason drills.

In the afternoon, the talented interloper — true freshman Jordan Jefferson — took his turn, alongside walk-on quarterback T.C. McCartney, another redshirt freshman.

Certainly there were no answers to the summer’s most burning question in Baton Rouge: who will take the first snap Aug. 30 in Tiger Stadium against Appalachian State? Answers were never in the equation on this day.

Instead, Monday was a day for platitudes, not problem solving.

“Definitely an exciting day,” Hatch said. “The first day is always exciting. But it is a continuation of what we’ve been doing all summer. We got in a good rhythm by the end of spring and continued that with the summer.”

Both quarterbacks admitted nerves were jangling under their green (non-contact) jerseys.

“We got our first-day jitters out,” said Lee. “It was fun. We did the best we could. When you finish up, you want to get better from where you finished off. We got better today.”

From a receiver’s viewpoint, senior Demetrius Byrd said Hatch and Lee’s performances in the morning session were better than he expected on day one.

“For the first day, from what I thought would happen, they did real good,” Byrd said.