Oct. 22, 2008 -- First off, you asked for more stories on former NFL first-round draft picks now coaching NCAA Division II golf teams, and GMT has again delivered. Today, part one of our exclusive one-part series takes us to Canyon, Texas where in late October, I saw how a fallen Leaf has changed colors after shuffling off to the Buffaloes.

Given what's happened to the two principals in the decade since, it's hard to remember just how intensely NFL fans and teams debated which quarterback should be taken first in the 1998 draft: Ryan Leaf, the rifle-armed quarterback who led Washington State to the Rose Bowl -- the Cougars make it to Pasadena approximately once every John McCain -- or University of Tennessee QB Peyton Manning.

The Indianapolis Colts had the first pick; the Chargers had the third but moved up to second by giving Arizona two first-round selections, a second-rounder, two players off their roster, and a family of Pandas from the San Diego Zoo -- all so they could take whichever quarterback Indy didn't. The Colts took Manning; the Chargers, Leaf.

On draft day, Leaf said, "I'm looking forward to a 15-year career, a couple of trips to the Super Bowl and a parade through downtown San Diego.''

Except for the 15-year career, the two trips to the Super Bowl, and the parade through downtown San Diego, it all came true. To be fair, Leaf didn't say the career would be as an NFL quarterback or that he'd go to the Super Bowl in uniform or that he himself would actually be in the parade.

In all seriousness, Leaf said those things as a 21-year-old kid who'd just rewritten Pac-10 record books and, by dint of the draft order, been deemed to be the second-best college football player in the country. I'm a 39-year-old man who's just rewritten this paragraph and probably isn't even the second-best writer of his own column, and I say dumber things than that all the time.

Still, Leaf's NFL career was only memorable for the wrong reasons, although it couldn't have begun any better. As the Manning Era in Indianapolis commenced with four straight losses, Leaf became the first quarterback in 15 years to win his first two professional starts. The success was short-lived. Leaf would play in just 23 more games over the next few years before announcing his retirement prior to training camp in 2002. In between, there were well-documented and oft-You-Tubed dustups with reporters, teammates, general managers, and heckling fans, adding insults to a slew of injuries and on-field inefficiency.

Four years later, Leaf turned up in Canyon, Texas, just a hitch-and-go south of Amarillo and a little east of nowhere in particular. He was hired to coach the quarterbacks at West Texas A&M University under head coach Don Carthel, who -- like Leaf -- came out of retirement to resurrect a moribund Buffalo football team. Carthel's already won more games (40 and counting against just six losses), not to mention three straight Lone Star Conference championships, in his three-plus seasons than WT did in the ten years prior to his arrival.

So far, Leaf has tutored two prolific passers: Dalton Bell and current QB Keith Null. The former set several conference passing records during his one season under Leaf, some of which have since been broken in the subsequent two by the latter. The school thought so highly of Leaf's work on the gridiron, they turned the golf team over to a guy who guessed his handicap was "10 or 11."

Now if you're one of those jaded, cynical conspiracy theorists who would dare to suggest the athletic department made him golf coach just so he could stay on campus to coach the quarterbacks, Ryan Leaf has two words for you:

Pretty much.

Leaf and I visited on the FieldTurf at Kimbrough Memorial Stadium last Saturday night in Canyon a couple of hours before West Texas A&M, ranked fourth in the nation, hosted archrival and No. 3 Abilene Christian University.

"It was a way for the school to make the money work for me to stay here," Leaf told me.

Which begs two questions:

1. How much do Division II golf coaches make? (Answer: a lot more than Division II quarterbacks coaches.)

2. How much do Division II quarterbacks coaches make? (Answer: barely more than Division II quarterbacks.)

"That doesn't mean I don't take pride in my job as golf coach," Leaf added. He admits he's had a tough time recruiting good players to a program that's never won a conference title but won't use that as an excuse for the Buffs' last-place finish in last season's Lone Star Conference championship.

If he seems out of place as a golf coach, Leaf still looks right at home on the football field. There he was on the sidelines before Saturday night's game in a gray t-shirt and shorts, warming up his starting quarterback Null, each with a receiver by his side to catch balls the other had chucked. Once Null was loose, Leaf found another pair of hands to play catch with and moved to the middle of the field, licking his fingertips before each pass.

Still in great shape at 32, the former Heisman Trophy finalist and first-round draft pick looked like he was licking his chops at the thought of suiting up again. It might've taken Leaf in his collegiate prime to have beaten Abilene Christian that night. Null threw for 415 yards but also three interceptions as WT couldn't dig itself out of a 31-7 halftime hole and lost its first regular season game in two years, 52-35. (I'm sure most of you were listening live, but in case you missed it, click here to catch the replay of the ACU radio broadcast. Tell me if you recognize the play-by-play man.)

Despite the setback Saturday night, West Texas A&M is still on the short list of teams that can go deep in the Division II playoffs. If Leaf can achieve any semblance of that success with his golf team, he might just get that parade he predicted.

He didn't tell me this in so many words, but I got the feeling as I listened to him that Leaf blows off his critics more easily now than he used to. That if you tried to make a joke at his expense, he'd throw one back at you that was even funnier. If there's any arrogance left, it's obviously not enough to keep him from beginning a new career and life in a place spotlights can't reach.

No matter what you thought of him before, you have to give at least a passing grade to a guy who's landed safely on the same feet at which a decade ago so much fame and fortune were thrown.

After all, it's a big drop from the top of the world to the bottom of a Canyon.

Grant Boone is a husband, father, broadcaster, and journalist born in Tennessee and living in Texas. During his nearly 20 years in sports journalism, he's been heard on tape delay in pizza joints half-filled with fully-drunk beer league softball teams and around the world covering major sporting events for ESPN, Turner Sports, Golf Channel, and CBS Radio. To read past installments of Grant Me This, click here. You can contact Grant at pgagrant@hotmail.com.