Column: Team in limbo while Fedora decides who will get quarterback nod

I  sat there in that Sutton’s booth, my head down and my face as bright as the leftover ketchup on my plate — picking at my little brother’s fries because I had already scarfed down my own.

I was trying to hide how embarrassed I was at the conversation my overly-friendly mom was trying to have with Marquise Williams as he zipped in to pick up his to-go order.

I should have known her conversation with this stranger-athlete wouldn’t end at just “Hi” — and Marquise went with it. He thanked her as she wished him good luck this season and waved back as he walked out the door.

Then I looked up.

“Who was that?” she asked, unaware that she had just talked with one of the biggest stars of 2013’s football team.

“Oh, that’s Marquise Williams,” I mindlessly responded through a smirk and some more fries. “He’s the starting quarterback on the football team.”

Maybe.

What I instinctually forgot at that humiliating moment is what many of us continue to forget now. Williams has not yet been named the starter. There’s a 6-foot-3, 215-pound redshirt freshman gunning for that spot just as hard as Williams is. And, if Mitch Trubisky has any say, his name is going to be the one that naturally rolls off the tongue: not Williams’.

While Williams has established himself as a dual-threat quarterback capable of carrying the squad when Bryn Renner went down last season, Trubisky is hoping to show the world that 9,000 passing yards wasn’t some high-school fluke — that it’ll carry over to college.

Larry Fedora has a decision to make. A decision that weighs experience versus hype, old versus new.

We haven’t seen Trubisky take a snap at the collegiate level, sparing UNC’s spring game in April. We know that he’s 2012’s Mr. Ohio and certainly has the potential to prove himself, but will he? Will Williams pick up right where he left off, anchoring a group that will face Clemson, Notre Dame and a rising Duke team?

I don’t know.

Neither does Fedora — he’s been mum and likely won’t let his decision be known until he has to. But he’ll have to make it soon.

My mom needs to know who to wave to at Sutton’s.