Advertisement

Doc Five: The most famous girlfriends in college football – No. 1, Katherine Webb

Frank Schwab
NFL writer

This offseason we will count down various topics from Monday through Friday, bringing you the top five of the important and definitely some not so important issues in college football. It's the Doc Five, every week until we will thankfully have actual games to discuss.

TOP FIVE MOST FAMOUS GIRLFRIENDS IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL

NO. 1, KATHERINE WEBB (AJ MCCARRON)

We posted a story about Katherine Webb appearing in Vanity Fair on Thursday. By Friday morning, there were more than 4,000 comments on the bottom of the post. For the last two months, Webb has been the biggest star associated with college football.

Our last two posts on Johnny Manziel, the first freshman Heisman Trophy winner ever, generated about 350 comments combined. Two posts this week on Jadeveon Clowney, the likely first pick of the 2014 NFL draft, got a little more than 300 comments. That's obviously far from an accurate or scientific method of proving stardom, but it says something.

There's no question about Webb's fame anymore. That's undeniable. The story of Miss Alabama, an Auburn grad, dating Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron started to spread in December. It took off during the BCS Championship Game when Webb was shown on television. And then shown again. And again.

It was a perfect storm. Brent Musburger's comments about her during a boring title game were the most talked-about part of the night on social media. Webb's Twitter followers grew by hundreds of thousands. She embraced the fame and has been in the spotlight since.

The question becomes, where does Webb go from here?

In that Vanity Fair piece, Webb was described as the "the modern-day Cindy Crawford," the supermodel who was in movies, television shows, many commercials and can still be found on infomercials pitching anti-aging skin care products about 25 years after she became famous.

Webb might not be Cindy Crawford, but she might not be limited to 15 minutes either. Be honest – you expected her to be out of the spotlight by now. But, that hasn't happened. There's something about her charisma that makes her very popular. (And for the inevitable comment about that last sentence, there are many beautiful women who have had a turn in the spotlight and didn't become nearly as popular as Webb – there's more to it than just her looks.)

Webb's appearance in Vanity Fair, a magazine that won't exactly be writing features about the genesis of the read option in college football, shows her progression. The story has grown from a college football story of a beauty pageant queen from Auburn dating the Alabama quarterback to fully mainstream. She's done the "Today" show. She covered the Super Bowl for "Inside Edition." She did the SI swimsuit issue. She's been in Vanity Fair. She is setting up a girls night out with Kate Upton ...

... and chit chatting with Mario Lopez.

Again, she's grown much bigger than just a college football story. There's really not a lot of historical precedent for what has happened to Webb. We'd guess that a far larger percentage of the

general public knows Katherine Webb these days than AJ McCarron, who has quarterbacked two national championship teams for the Crimson Tide. A little more than two months ago very few people had ever heard of Webb.

So will her 15 minutes be up soon? Perhaps. Maybe we'll still be seeing her in 15 years. She's done a great job marketing herself, and comes off as very personable and charming in her multiple television appearances, and to her nearly 270,000 Twitter followers. She has handled her instant fame with tremendous grace, and there's something to be said for that. Her appearance on ABC's celebrity diving show "Splash," debuting on March 19, will make her even more well known among people who would never tune in to watch a college football game.

Who knows where Webb will go from here, but one thing is for sure: Her star power isn't dimming yet.

Previously on the Doc Five ...
No. 5: Sarah Savage
No. 4: Olivia Manning
No. 3: Lennay Kekua
No. 2: Florida student in Tebow pic (Erin Drewes)

- - -
Want to join the conversation? Hit us up on Twitter @YahooDrSaturday and be sure to "Like" Dr. Saturday on Facebook for football conversations and stuff you won't see on the blog.