And they chanted buoyantly and clapped between the cheering: "JAY-son GESS-er . . . JAY-son GESS-er . . ."

Yes, there may have been better quarterbacks than Jason Gesser at WSU.

Jack Thompson was a prototype of his era—big, strong, able. Timm Rosenbach could beat you throwing and running. Mark Rypien would become a Super Bowl MVP. Drew Bledsoe's combination of height and arm was almost revolutionary, and it took him to a Super Bowl. Ryan Leaf could see everything developing and then strike.

For a combination of being formidable and fortuitous, however, none of them matches Gesser, who leaves Washington State as the quarterback who won the most. He had to stay longer than most of them to do it, he had to have good players around him, but Gesser walked out of more stadiums happy than any of his predecessors. He leaves WSU having helped author consecutive double-digit-victory seasons.

He had said the Rose Bowl would do it, that successfully guiding a team to the best bowl game would fulfill all his goals. And now, after WSU’s 48-27 victory over UCLA [December 7, 2002, in Pasadena], a rose clenched in his teeth, a white cap commemorating a Pac-10 championship, his celebration photograph about to grace the sports cover of both the Los Angeles Times and Daily News, Gesser's race was won.

"When he was young, seventh or eighth grade, he used to set goals for himself," said his dad, Jim, from Honolulu. "The goals he set were amazing."

He wanted to throw 80 touchdown passes in high school. One year he set out to have no interceptions. He threw one.

But WSU fans shouldn't dwell only on the numbers—the 24 victories he started, the school-record passing yards. They should never forget the day he dragged his right leg onto the storied Rose Bowl turf and laid it all out there, just because that's what he does.

"That guy's all heart," said offensive guard Billy Knotts. "There's no give-up in Jason Gesser."

Given the importance and the national stage, Gesser's day might have been the college equivalent of Willis Reed's lamed-legged performance in the NBA finals of 1970, or Kirk Gibson's off-the-bench, bum-wheeled bomb as the Dodgers beat Oakland in the 1988 World Series.

But then, so much about Gesser didn't seem to add up, starting from the time he arrived at WSU. How was a kid from Honolulu going to adjust to life in Pullman?

"I remember when I first chose this place," he says. "Even the people in Hawaii said, 'Why'd you choose Washington State? It's in the middle of nowhere.' My reason was simple enough: I knew this was the right place for me."

He sometimes seemed fragile, but he was always throwing his body at yard-markers, at safeties, at whatever got in his way. He and others recall his defining moments as late in that freshman season of 1999, when he had a bad thumb but led a team of meager capability to a victory at Hawaii.

On one play, he dove for the chains and in his words, "got cleaned in the ribs." Wincing back to the huddle, he had established a tone. Safety Billy Newman told him that from that moment forward, everybody in the program knew that nothing less than a best effort would do.