Commitment is a smash with Cougar nation

The obvious caveat is that there's still a lot of football ahead. Heaps has his senior year of high school in Sammamish, Wash., to complete. Then there's the question of whether he'll serve an LDS mission, thus stalling his football progress. He says for now he hasn't decided whether he'll go.

There have been times at BYU when the hype outstripped the results. The most obvious was after Ben Olson announced in 2001 he would play at BYU. He was not only considered the best quarterback, but by some the best player in the country. Yet his plan never launched in Provo. He redshirted a year, served a mission, and transferred to UCLA, where he had an uneven career.

That wasn't far from Heaps' mind — or at least the media's — on Tuesday. Asked if he felt the pressure of playing at a school that measures quarterbacks by how many records they set, he coolly replied, "Now there's an expectation here, and I have to go out and perform. I want to live up to those expectations."

You could hear the rustle of anticipation all the way to Seattle.

e-mail: rock@desnews.com