Timm Rosenbach wants to make a deal and Steve Walsh couldn't.
So the quarterbacks considered the second best coming out of college this year will bypass the April 23 NFL draft and take their chances in a supplemental draft this summer.Walsh, who quarterbacked Miami to the national championship in 1987, and Washington State's Rosenbach, the leading college passer last season, have both declared their intention to turn pro even though they have a year of college eligibility remaining.
But they let Monday's deadline to declare for the regular draft slip by without notifying the league of that intention, so they must wait until late June or early July for the first of two supplementals.
It was a conscious decision by both.
Rosenbach's agent, Gary Wichard, said it came down to whether his man would be the second quarterback picked - behind UCLA's Troy Aikman - or one of two plums in a quarterback-poor market.
Wichard said he made the decision so that the fourth-year junior would be treated - and paid - like a No. 1 draft choice "rather than a guy taken sixth or seventh, depending on how things fall."
"We have a tremendous amount of leverage," said Wichard, who worked out an $11 million, 10-year deal with Seattle for Brian Bosworth after he bypassed the regular draft in 1987 for the supplemental. "A team that picks him has to sign him or lose its No. 1 pick next year. If they can't sign him, then they'll trade him."
Walsh, according to sources, tried to get some leverage in the regular draft, seeking a team that would commit itself to picking him early on the first round.
A team making a pick in the first round of the supplemental draft loses its pick in the first round the next year.
Unlike Walsh, Rosenbach is not expected to graduate next year and would have to petition the NFL for eligibility.
However, the league granted eligibility last week to Heisman Trophy winner Barry Sanders, a pure junior rather than a four-year player like Rosenbach, so it is highly unlikely he would be turned down.