It's no joking matter for Ainge

Photo by Ray Pineda/Illustration

Erik Ainge used to be a Jackass.

Not a jerk. Not a prima-donna. A “Jackass,” as in the hidden-camera show starring MTV’s merry pranksters.

In 2003, the blue-chip, 6-foot-6 prep quarterback with famous genes ran all over his hometown of Hillsboro, Ore., with a 20-foot-long dead snake and a video camera to tape the hilarity.

Poking around a high school friend’s guest house near the Portland suburb, Ainge and his buddy made a discovery.

“There’s a black bag,” Ainge says. “A huge black bag in the freezer.”

The two opened the bag — left by a previous tenant — and found a dead snake some 20 feet long and 5 or 6 inches in diameter.

Then they ran.

“I came to first and was like, ‘Wait a minute … it’s in the freezer, it can’t be alive,’ ” he says.

Then Ainge came to the most logical conclusion a 17-year-old’s brain can reach when faced with a huge, dead snake and a little spare time: Let’s have a little fun.

“We threw it in the truck and took it to all our friends and girlfriends and coaches and put it on the doorstep and rang the doorbell and left,” Ainge said.

Another friend videotaped their responses from the bushes.

“People wouldn’t even come outside,” Ainge says. “They were screaming, ‘Erik, come back here!’ ”

Those last lines trail off, in a voice that’s much quieter than the one that can bark a cadence loud enough to be heard over 108,000 fans in Neyland Stadium.

He’s telling the story almost sheepishly, not with embarrassment, but almost as if he’s heard it from someone else, like he wasn’t the 17-year-old ringing doorbells.

In a way, that’s true.

Ainge isn’t a 17-year-old high school quarterback anymore. Just like he’s not the 18-year-old true freshman who burst on the scene and helped guide Tennessee to the SEC championship game in 2004.

He’s not the 19-year-old who lost his confidence and his starting job as a sophomore when the Vols posted their worst season since Ainge was just 2 years old.

He’s no longer just a football player. He’s a quarterback, one that’s almost complete.

Anyone putting together a highlight film of Ainge’s career would certainly include the touchdown pass he threw to Bret Smith in 2004 against Florida.

Well, anyone except the guy who threw it.

On that play, Ainge hit Smith in the corner of the end zone with a perfect pass. Smith jumps and twists and comes down in bounds for a touchdown in the Vols’ win.

“I should have thrown the ball about a second-and-a-half earlier. He ran behind the corner and the safety was in the middle of the field. He was wide open,” said Ainge, whose uncle, former NBA star Danny Ainge, first suggested he play football as a sixth-grader. “But since I wasn’t looking there, I ended up having to throw an almost perfect ball and he had to make one of the best catches I’ve ever been a part of just to score.”

If Ainge had a time machine, that play would look a lot less spectacular.

“I kind of go back and look at that, and now that play would look like, ‘Oh they busted on defense,’ not ‘What a throw, what a catch,’ ” Ainge says.

Maturity is the easiest way to describe it, that quiet understanding that being flashy isn’t always better than being reliable.

After completing 67 percent of his passes — a single-season school record — for 2,989 yards and 19 touchdowns last season, Ainge still aspires to be a better quarter-back.

But his dreams have changed a bit since his freshman season. Now he wants to have the right — albeit unexpected — answer to a question.

In Ainge’s dream, it’s first and 10. The Vols are up six points and need those 10 yards to get in field goal range. A player flashes open behind the safeties, but Ainge lays the ball off to a tailback in the flat.

Huh?

“In the press conference someone says, ‘Why did you lay it off?’ ” Ainge explains. “I say, ‘Even though that guy was open, a deep ball’s harder to catch than a running back in the flat. Arian Foster’s got good hands, give it to him and he’ll make 4 yards. Now it’s second and 6, and we only need 6 yards to make that field goal.”

It’s not flashy. It’s not the play that 8 year olds dream up in the back yard, but it’s the kind of play Ainge wouldn’t have made a year ago and wouldn’t have even thought about in 2005.

The maturation of Ainge has reached the final stages, where checking to a better run play — one of Peyton Manning’s greatest strengths as a quarterback — or man-aging the game is the last frontier.

“That’s not real fancy, real glamorous,” he says. “But I don’t want to just make a great throw here. I want to make the easy plays, make the plays I should, the plays that move the chains and win football games.”

Only it wasn’t that long ago that Tennessee didn’t win games, at least not like Vols fans and players were used to.

In 2005, Tennessee finished 5-6. It was the first time since 1988 Tennessee had a losing record. And Ainge, at least on the outside, appeared a wreck.

He’d always been the best athlete around. He’d done well in school. His family relationships were good.

All of a sudden, the blue-chip quarterback was riding the bench.

“It was the first time I’ve really had any real obstacle in anything in my life,” he said. “I had little things, but that was the first really test of my manhood.”

A test he failed, at least initially.

He couldn’t handle the rotation with senior Rick Clausen. He couldn’t understand why he wasn’t on the field.

Until he did.

The so-called bouquet toss out of the end zone at LSU — when he flung the ball into a defender’s hands who took it back for a touchdown — seemed like the low point. Ainge says that came two months later against Memphis, when for the first time in his life the game was too fast and he knew he shouldn’t be on the field.

“That was the low point. When you’re like, ‘He’s the better guy for the job right now,’ ” he says. “That was the first time I’ve ever admitted that. And it helped me.”

Ainge started asking questions. Why was Clausen better? How could he learn to incorporate those attributes into his own game?

Enter offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe, who had driven NFL stars Peyton and Eli Manning to new heights in college.

Ainge threw four touchdowns in last year’s season-opener against Cal. That performance planted the seed.

But his confidence didn’t truly bloom until he helped the Vols win fourth-quarter games against Alabama and South Carolina in late October.

Gone was the player tailback Arian Foster, one of Ainge’s closest friends on the team, saw in the huddle during 2005.

“As a sophomore, I remember him being real just jittery in the huddle,” Foster said. “When he was calling the play out, he was focused, but he seemed kind of nerv-ous at the same time. Last year being in the huddle with him, he was more calm, composed, just really sure about himself. This year, I see him calling plays, even in the offseason, knowing what was going to happen. Smiling a little bit.”

Ainge had coaches raving in spring practice before undergoing surgery to repair a partially torn meniscus in his right knee. He spent all summer in Knoxville working with UT’s incoming receivers — something that let Cutcliffe know just how far Ainge has come in four years.

“It’s been most evident this summer in his work ethic and what he’s done with these guys that have come in here new,” says Cutcliffe. “The focus he’s had and the effort and intensity in his training, I think that shows maturity. Hopefully that will display on the field as well.”

Ainge is too busy for any elaborate practical jokes these days. What with offseason workouts, fall practice and classes.

And then there’s all those media commitments.

Open Sports Illustrated or the Sporting News or flip on ESPN and you may have seen him. After last month’s SEC Media Days in Alabama, he’s been written about in plenty of newspapers throughout the Southeast. As if that’s not enough, he even did an interview with England’s Sky Sports.

Ainge’s response to all the attention reveals more of that maturity.

“When I hear people talk about me, it makes me think how lucky I am to have all this academic support, coaches, I have all these people around me and sometimes I’m the one who gets to look good from it,” he says. “Knowing that’s why (the attention) is happening and not just saying, ‘Look at me, look at me,’ understanding that is what helps me not get too high or too low.”

It’s a veteran answer from a player who knows his legacy rests with his performance — and that of his teammates — this season. He knows that to go down as a great Tennessee quarterback, he’ll need a championship.

And that wise, battle-tested Ainge takes a page from Peyton Manning’s playbook when asked about his legacy.

“His attitude was to be happy with his teammates, not I told you so (when the Colts won the Super Bowl),” Ainge said. “If we are to win the SEC championship or not, I’m not doing it to prove to people I can win a championship. I feel like I’m doing it for guys on the team and myself.”

Drew Edwards covers University of Tennessee football. He may be reached at 865-342-6274.