Leinart's Last Dance

Matt Leinart, USC's all-everything quarterback, is having a very bad day.

Step! Rock! Tuck! a voice yells at him again and again from the sidelines.

But Leinart keeps rocking when he should be tucking and tucking when he should be stepping. Finally, he just gives up and sits down.

This is the Heisman Trophy winner? The superstud who will go No. 1 in next year's NFL draft? The Houdini who pulled out USC's did-you-see-that? 34-31 win at Notre Dame last Saturday?

Yep, but this isn't football. This is Leinart's only class this semester at USC--ballroom dancing--and Leinart dances the way Winnebagos parallel park.

"I had no idea who he was," says his teacher, Jesus Fuentes, who was in Dirty Dancing. "But then I noticed the class getting packed. And then some girls said to me, 'When we switch partners, will you make sure you put me with Matt?' I still haven't seen him play."

But what are his best moves? "None," Leinart says. "I have no moves at all."

O.K., so Leinart has two left anvils for feet, but the rest of his life is just right. "I've got no worries," he says. "It's all for love, for team, just being with my guys."

You got a problem with the most famous college football player in America representing a school when he's taking only one dance class at that school? Get in line.

"One dance class?" my Notre Dame buddy gripes. "How does that make him a college athlete? What's the difference between him and Brett Favre?"