A fitting end to the Reggie Ball era

And so this is how the Reggie Ball years will end.
Raise your hand if you're not surprised to hear that the Georgia Tech quarterback was ruled academically ineligible for the Yellow Jackets' Jan. 1 Gator Bowl game with West Virginia.
My hand is up - not because I didn't think that Ball was a smart kid or anything, but because it just seems a fitting way for him to end his time in Atlanta.
Ball is the rare Division I-A college quarterback who started from the first game of his freshman year - I remember seeing him take the field against BYU in a nationally televised ESPN game and wondering aloud how good he was going to be by the time he was a senior.
The answer to that musing was that he was never really going to get any better - indeed, it was all downhill from there, in a manner of speaking.
After completing 51.7 percent of his passes as a freshman for 1,996 yards and 10 touchdowns and 11 interceptions, Ball went on to have back-to-back-to-back seasons in which he completed less than 50 percent of his throws.
His senior season was by far his worst - he completed just 44.4 percent of his passes despite having a first-team All-American wide receiver in Calvin Johnson to bail him out whenever plays broke down.
His career touchdown-to-interception ratio of 57 TDs and 55 INTs speaks volumes - despite having all the talent in the world, Ball was just not able to translate ability into success on the field.
And now he's not even going to be on the field - a senior quarterback having failed to keep his grades up so that he could lead his team to battle one last time.
Unbelievable.
- Chris Graham