The NFL scout tells the story of traveling to the University of Texas to study tape on the long line of Longhorns pro prospects, popping a copy of the Oklahoma game into the machine and turning his discerning eye to the quarterback without a fighting chance for success. For three seasons, nothing changed: Same simplistic schemes, same vertical routes, same fallout for Chris Simms, cursed with the fallout as a big-game failure.

	Chris Simms says the offense he ran at Texas didn't allow him to grow as a quarterback.

"Hang in there," the scout told Simms. "We see what's happening here."

Finally, the most relentlessly scrutinized player in college football history invites the scouts' eyes at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala., this week. Simms wants everyone to watch him on the same South squad with his Heisman Trophy teammate, USC's Carson Palmer, and believe Simms when he insists the best of the Texas senior is still stored within his powerful left arm. He wants them to believe the NFL scout who says his true potential had been constrained within an unsophisticated college offense.

"You saw Carson Palmer and USC's offense," Simms said, "and they were doing everything. They had guys going in every direction. He got to make a lot of different throws. Same with Byron Leftwich. Their offense is wide open. He was getting to throw 50 times a game. That's the reason I'm going to this game this week. I want to go there and show the coaches and the scouts that I can make every throw on the field."

Before leaving for Saturday's Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala., Simms sipped on a protein shake at fitness guru Bill Parisi's gymnasium in New Jersey. For the next three months, this is Simms' conditioning home as he prepares for the pre-draft process that promises to probe and prod him. He's desperate for a chance to sell himself. For now, he's projected as a second- to fourth-round pick, but as one NFL executive says, "I'm still trying to understand how much of his trouble against great defenses in college was him, and how much was his coaching ... because his tools and his makeup are just too impressive to believe that the pressure just paralyzed this kid."

For once, Simms yearns to be inspected. He is the most carefully considered player in modern college football history. Everyone had a take on him. Everyone watched him closely from beginning to end, so many seeming to revel in his failures. From the son of a Super Bowl MVP, to the nation's No. 1 high school prospect, from his rivalry with Major Applewhite to finishing his Texas career as the second winningest quarterback in school history behind Bobby Layne, Simms has been the subject of equal parts preposterous praise early in his career, and unruly scorn late. Undoubtedly, the truth lies somewhere between.

For the longest time, Simms has been careful in his criticism of the sordid Applewhite-Simms soap opera. Yet now, he still thinks back and wonders: How much could've been different for him had the Texas coaching staff stayed with him during his sophomore year, stopping the ceaseless shuttle between Simms and Applewhite?

"I wish it had been different my sophomore year," Simms said. "We lost to OU 63-14. I didn't get into the game until it was 35-0. After that, they picked Major as the starter. I wish they had picked me as the starter. Because the season was lost at that point. We had lost to Oklahoma and we had lost to Stanford. We weren't going to win the national championship. I was really hoping they would make me the starter so I could get more experience for the next year.

"They knew there was more upside (with me). As soon as we got done with that bowl game after my sophomore year, they told me, 'You're going to be the starter next year. Don't worry about it.' So, if you knew that all year, why didn't I play the last five games and let me get some experience?"

"That's the thing that I've always regretted. Going into my junior year I was inexperienced. In my fifth game ever, there I am sitting there against Oklahoma in the Red River War, against the No. 2 team in the country."

A Giant Grudge

As long as Chris Simms has been on the national stage as a quarterback, his father, Phil, has stayed silent on his son. The former New York Giants quarterback started this policy with his son an All-American at Ramapo High School in Franklin Lakes, N.J., and stayed true through his four seasons at the University of Texas, where there were times he was tempted to rise up and defend him from the waves of criticism. "He was trying to let me get my own respect as a man, instead of always speaking up to defend me," Chris said. "But I know how he felt about me. And that means more to me than anything in the world." He's still so fiercely protective of his own father that the prospects of the Giants drafting him -- however unlikely with Kerry Collins in his prime -- leaves him uncertain of whether he'd ever want it. "I have such mixed feelings about the Giants," he said. "I'll never forget they cut my dad the year he went to the Pro Bowl and was the team MVP. That's what I have the most bitterness about, maybe more than anything that's happened in my own life. It's always really hurt me that the Giants did that." -- Adrian Wojnarowski

As it turned out, it was the prelude to the most turbulent time of his college football career, a junior season when the Longhorns' national championship dreams were dashed in the loss to OU, revived in the Big 12 championship game only to be obliterated again in a devastating defeat to Colorado. Texas fans vandalized his car, flooded his voicemail with vicious and vile messages, scrubbed "Simms sucks" on cars in Austin and ultimately left him hesitant to ever leave his off-campus apartment.

Once, he was the prodigal son standing in the movie theatre on Saturday nights, driving his friends crazy when he indulged every Longhorn fan angling to stop and chat with him. His buddies stood there, tapping toes, waiting for Simms to grow a little selfish and excuse himself. He never did. If people wanted to pre-judge him as a spoiled golden boy out of the tiny suburbs of New York City, upon meeting him, they found themselves mistaken.

Yet, the perfect gentleman had been hit so hard, so differently than everyone else in college football a season ago, it threatened to turn his delightful disposition into something decidedly dour.

"It came close, really close, to changing me," Simms said. "Last year, I was in a bad mood all the time. I was angry at a lot of people. I was angry at this place, the coaches, the people. ... I was bitter about everything in the world. It almost did get the best of me. I just wanted to leave here and say, 'To hell with this place.'"

More than people ever knew, he had come close to leaving Texas as a junior and turning pro. "The Big 12 title game ruined any chance I had," Simms confessed, and rest assured, it was for the best. Outside of the three interceptions to OU as a senior -- one tipped, and one a receiver running the wrong route -- he had a magnificent season, setting a school record with 26 touchdown passes, including a terrific farewell performance in the Cotton Bowl victory over LSU.

As Simms left the Cotton Bowl in Dallas to fly home to Franklin Lakes, N.J., and start preparing for the draft, an old family friend, Bill Parcells, had just arrived in town. Parcells needs a quarterback for the Cowboys now, the way he needed one two decades ago with the New York Giants. Suddenly, the speculation is rampant: If Parcells trades down in the first round for multiple picks, if Simms is still there in the second, could it happen?

"It would be a dream come true for me to play for coach Parcells, but it depends on what he wants to do," Simms said. "But I have a hard time believing he'll draft a young quarterback, because I'm sure he wants immediate results. I could see him getting a free agent, like Jake Plummer."

Between now and draft day, it's one more salacious scenario surrounding the quarterbacking life and times of Chris Simms. One more soap opera lurking around the corner, one more set of klieg lights burning down on the most judged football player of a generation.

Adrian Wojnarowski is a columnist for The Record (N.J.) and a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPNWoj@aol.com.