Almost every head coach has gone through it in their coaching career, either as a coordinator, position coach or the head honcho himself.

A quarterback competition where they hope to find a legitimate, hands-down starter. And then, at the end, they can't make a decision - so they decide to play both.

Some times, like during Florida's run to the national championship in 2006, it works perfectly with Chris Leak and Tim Tebow. Other times, see Notre Dame 2007, it is complete failure.

Michigan is less than two days away from its own multi-quarterback debut in 2009 with junior Nick Sheridan and freshmen Denard Robinson and Tate Forcier. Wolverines coach Rich Rodriguez has said over and over again that all three will play. Michigan's also gone through it before with Drew Henson and Tom Brady in 1998 and '99.

Early on, though, coaches think it isn't the worst idea because it eliminates debate.

"You hope that someone would emerge and you hope that that would happen naturally," Ohio State coach Jim Tressel said. "You want to try and not (have) it being viewed as simply a coaching decision. Obviously, people can agree with the decision or disagree with the decision and so forth.

"But what you hope happens is that the course of the early season, and people love to talk about it in the preseason and all that, but you hope that during the early season that you can play more than one guy. I think we all like to do that. And then you hope it emerges and that it becomes very obvious to everyone involved who the person is, who is going to be behind the wheel with the lead group."

Ohio State had this happen in 2005 with Troy Smith and Justin Zwick and again last year with Todd Boeckman and Terrelle Pryor. Michigan State went through it, sort of, this season with Kirk Cousins and Keith Nichol. Cousins is the announced starter, but Nichol will also likely play.

That said, the starter usually earns the nod because he's played the best, whether he plays the entire game or not.

"The No. 1 is No. 1 for a reason," Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis said the week before his season-opener in 2007. "I think that people can play themselves into a role and play themselves out of a role. What you don't want to do is you don't want to be running quarterbacks.

"That being said, would I ever consider playing more than one quarterback? Absolutely, I would."

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan basketball for Annarbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow on Twitter @mikerothstein.