LOS ANGELES -- At first, it was easy to forget why they were staring.
During his first year on campus at USC, Sam Darnold could walk around with his anonymity intact. He's 6-foot-4, so some people could have assumed he was an athlete, but he never got the awkward sense he was being watched.
Being named the starting quarterback and playing at a Heisman-caliber level almost immediately has a way of changing that.
“When I first got named the starter, people started looking at me differently, and I had the mindset of, like, ‘What are you looking at?