A few years ago, something remarkable happened. The Isaiah Stanback jersey that I had been wearing to Husky football games throughout college suddenly changed, and in its place was…a Chris Izbicki jersey. Needless to say, my purple No. 4 replica ended up stashed deep in the back of the closet.
It’s a funny thing about college football. Uniform numbers turn over from year to year, taking a memorable digit to a complete unknown from spring to fall.
In the case of my Stanback jersey, it’s not that I was worried about people mistaking me for a Chris Izbicki fan (which I most certainly wasn’t). It’s that I simply didn’t want to invite the jokes that would come along with the number. Stanback wasn’t legendary enough to be recognized as the one and only No. 4. And Izbicki, as it turned out, wasn’t even mediocre enough to dispel memories of Stanback. So it was that No. 4 faded into the mist.
Which brings us to No. 10.