Opening Day-starter announcements, whether in major-league baseball for the pitcher or college football for the quarterback, generally fall into the anti-climactic category. A trail of crumbs usually leads to the obvious choice.

Rob Likens, Kansas University’s offensive coordinator, dropped a ton of them Monday in a session with the local media.

Barring an upset of Buster Douglas magnitude, junior Montell Cozart will get the Week 1 call vs. South Dakota State (Sept. 5, 11 a.m.). Of course, that doesn’t mean the job is his for the entire season.

Likens’ clues were big ones.

“It is so hard for a freshman, just freshmen football players in general,” Likens said. “I think the easiest position to play as a freshman is probably running back or wide receiver. You just rely on natural ability and talent and react and see what happens. A quarterback has got to learn the entire offense. He has to learn all of the calls. He has to learn what everybody else does.”

Likens praised the intelligence, quick feet and overall athleticism of Carter Stanley, the freshman from Vero Beach, Florida. The OC also said he is impressed with the “big arm” of Bishop Miege graduate Ryan Willis. It’s not their ability Likens questions. It’s the dwindling pages of the calendar that makes him drop the Cozart clues.

“You can eliminate the last week,” Likens said. “That’s game week. You have four weeks of training camp. That week’s gone. So you really have three weeks to take somebody’s position as a freshman, somebody that’s been there in the spring and has worked 15 practices that you didn’t.”

Likens crossed one more week off the preparation.

“That first week is a wash because they have to learn the offense,” he said. “Really, they have two weeks to beat out a guy who has been there a long time. I’m not saying it can’t be done.”

The coaches want to be able to evaluate the freshmen in game conditions. Maybe they think throwing them out there too soon would be a prescription for a misleading evaluation, leading to false negative impressions. Without a microwave approach, the freshmen will have a more fair shot to show what they can do in a game.

Cozart is the only of the three leading quarterback contenders who has shown what he can do under live-game circumstances. In previous years, he was much better in practice. The new staff is hoping that with a simplified offense, Cozart can free up his talent and perform better. If after a few weeks he looks pretty much the same as in the past, Stanley, still my guess as to which QB will lead the team in passing yardage, will have more preparation before being thrown to the Bears (Week 5 in Lawrence) or some other squad with a big talent advantage.

Dayne Crist and Jake Heaps stood out in practice, but couldn’t bring it to games under chaotic circumstances. Something tells me the quick-afoot Stanley will handle chaos more smoothly.

Simulating game conditions for a quarterback wearing a red shirt that makes him off limits to tacklers is impossible.

You have to try to create as much of that chaos around him as you can.

“It’s the fine line we talk about almost in every meeting that we have as coaches,” Likens said. “You really can’t create it unless you go live. You just can’t do it. You’re never going to know it until the live bullets are flying around. That’s why you see NFL teams, they spend millions and millions of dollars researching quarterbacks in the NFL, and how many busts do you see in the draft all the time? They don’t even know until they get them behind their offense in a game, live bullets, on national TV. Then you find out if they’re a bust or not. And it’s hard.”

Likens was looking forward to Monday’s practice because it was the second time through for Day 1 of the repeating cycle of his Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 offense installation.

“This is where you’re going to start seeing the separation of the players from the guys who have been in their playbooks, guys that are coachable, guys who are smart,” Likens said. “They will start separating themselves from the other guys that don’t learn, don’t learn from their mistakes, don’t learn from their failures. You’ll start to see a separation this week.”

Such evaluations of the mind help, but don’t reveal as much as those that take place when the safety of the body is at stake.