GAINESVILLE, FLA. ? In the beginning, there was a baby-faced quarterback from Charlotte, N.C., staring into a camera for an image ESPN2 beamed around the college-football world.

He wore an East jersey as he stood on a sideline at San Antonio’s Alamodome during a national high-school football all-star game. He held a cap in his hands, out of camera’s view.

The end of Florida’s journey to this season’s national championship game is less than four weeks away, when the Gators and Ohio State kick off in Glendale, Ariz. But the start? The start is Leak, his cap and his words on Jan. 5, 2003.

“Out of all the schools that recruited me, one program has made a commitment to my future that is second to none,” Leak said that Sunday night. “I trust what I have been told, and I’m following my heart. Today, I am officially committing to Ron Zook and the University of Florida.”

Then he donned the cap, which bore a Gators logo on the front and started changing the Florida program in a way few others have.

Through four years over which almost everything else about Florida football has changed, Leak has remained a constant. He’s on track to finish his Gators career with a school-record 47 starts, and he already has set school records for pass completions, pass attempts and passing yards.

Start No. 47, of course, will rank as Leak’s most significant, but his importance to the program, and its progress toward the national-title game, started before he took a single snap.

When Leak committed, other high-school standouts took note and pushed the Gators up their list of favorites. The thought of playing with a highly touted quarterback appealed to dozens of players.

Leak placed an exponent on that truth when he took some of his national TV time to encourage other top prospects to come to Florida with him.

“Having his name linked with Florida really helped during that recruiting season and the next one,” scout.com national recruiting analyst Jamie Newberg said. “He was so good in high school, and he played so well as a freshman.”

The next difference came thanks to another quarterback. The day before Leak aligned himself with Florida, Gators starter Rex Grossman announced his intention to leave a year early for NFL.

With Grossman gone, Zook and the Gators’ coaching staff could have entered the 2003 season with only Ingle Martin boasting college experience. Redshirt freshmen Gavin Dickey and Patrick Dosh and fellow recruit Justin Midgett were the other quarterback options.

But Leak’s pedigree, his 15,593 high-school passing yards and then-national-record 185 touchdown passes, brought more hope to a shaky situation.

“Knowing that a guy like Chris was going to be there,” wide receiver Andre Caldwell said, “that made a big difference for me.”

So Caldwell came aboard, as did offensive lineman Steve Rissler, linebacker Earl Everett and defensive end Jarvis Moss. All four are expected to start against the Buckeyes on Jan. 8.

Leak, though, would start before any of them. He spent that July and August showcasing the skills that made hundreds of schools fawn over him.

Leak rotated with Martin and Dickey during the season’s first four games, including losses to Miami and Tennessee. For a while, the Vols had seemed certain to receive Leak’s services after he watched his older brother C.J. try to reconstruct his career there.

But late in the 2002 season, when Chris Leak was a high-school senior, Vols coaches benched C.J. on national TV against Georgia. That ended their courtship of Chris; in an ironic twist, Tennessee would be the last college opponent Leak would face as a backup quarterback.

“I’ve always been a big believer in things happening for a reason,” C.J. Leak said in a September interview. “(Chris) just wanted to go somewhere where he could work hard and succeed and help a team win. He’s trying to do that here.”

The Vols would fall to the Gators in Leak’s junior and senior years; the second victory set the stage for this championship-game run.