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Chad Morris is gone, but the book on his quarterback room at Arkansas isn’t quite closed and the latest chapter might be the wildest.

After a tumultuous season with the Razorbacks, Nick Starkel is in the process of applying for a “specific waiver” that would give him immediate eligibility at San Jose State, a UA spokesperson told HawgBeat.

Yes, the same Mountain West school that intercepted him five times en route to a shocking upset in Fayetteville will, if all goes to plan, be his new home for his final season of college football.

The exact details of Starkel’s waiver aren’t known, but he told HawgBeat that he has changed course in graduate school, shifting from a master’s in operations management to one in criminal justice.

“I’m going to SJSU to get a masters in criminal justice, which Arkansas doesn’t offer, in order to pursue a professional career in the private sector,” Starkel said. “Both (of my) parents served in the military, so I believe the private sector will be a good fit for me when I finish playing ball.”

On the surface, that seems like a pretty bizarre ending to an Arkansas tenure that included 10 touchdowns and seven interceptions as a graduate transfer from Texas A&M. However, it fits perfectly with one of the craziest stretches of quarterback play in UA - and likely college football in general - history.

Starkel was one of the Razorbacks’ eight different starting quarterbacks over the past two years, a span of 24 games in which they posted consecutive 2-10 seasons.

In 2018, Ty Storey and Cole Kelley battled for the starting job through spring ball, fall camp and into the season. They rotated starts until Storey was finally named QB1 in Week 4.

With Storey out with a concussion, though, Connor Noland joined an exclusive list by becoming just the eighth true freshman to start a game at quarterback for Arkansas, doing so against Tulsa. It was also the second time during the SEC era (since 1992) that the Razorbacks started three different players under center, joining the 2006 season (Robert Johnson, Mitch Mustain, Casey Dick).

As a team, the Razorbacks had more interceptions (18) than touchdown passes (17) and posted a quarterback rating of 112.4, which ranked 114th nationally.

All three of those quarterbacks had eligibility remaining, but none of them returned for the 2019 season. Storey and Kelley entered the transfer portal, while Noland - fresh off a run to the College World Series as part of the Razorbacks’ weekend rotation - opted to focus on baseball.

Instead, Morris went to the portal and made the rare decision to bring in not one, but two graduate transfer quarterbacks in the same season. Ben Hicks reunited with his former coach after breaking all of SMU’s major career passing records, while Starkel came to Fayetteville a year removed from setting an SEC bowl record with 499 passing yards against Wake Forest.

The new faces - which included four-star true freshman KJ Jefferson - gave fans a sense of hope. With Hicks’ experience in the system, Starkel’s raw talent and Jefferson’s potential, the Razorbacks had to be better at quarterback in 2019, many thought. It also didn’t hurt that Storey and Kelley were tabbed backups at their new schools - Western Kentucky and FCS Southeastern Louisiana, respectively - to begin the year.

They were wrong.

Arkansas’ coaching staff once again failed to establish a No. 1 quarterback in fall camp. This time, though, a true starter never emerged. Injuries and general ineffectiveness led to them splitting the first nine starts of the season - five for Starkel and four for Hicks.

More incredibly, the Razorbacks ended up using five different starting quarterbacks in their final five games of the season. It’s believed to be the most they’ve ever used in one year and quite possibly could be the first time an FBS program has used that many different starters in consecutive games.

Morris wasn’t around for those final two games because of another incredible twist in the story - Storey? - of his quarterbacks at Arkansas. Desperately needing a win to at least momentarily save his job, Morris watched from the opposite sideline as Storey hammered home the final nail in his coffin.

Despite having lost all nine of his starts with the Razorbacks the year before, the Charleston native cemented himself in Arkansas lore by leading Western Kentucky to touchdowns on all five of its first-half possessions en route to a 45-19 blowout victory over the Razorbacks.

Storey accounted for 290 yards and three touchdowns in the game - part of an 8-2 run as the Hilltoppers’ starter, capped by a dramatic bowl win. A couple hours away in Conway that same day, Kelley came off the bench to complete 20 of 24 passes for 273 yards and a touchdown and added four more scores on the ground to help Southeastern Louisiana upset UCA - a team that beat Western Kentucky before Storey became the starter.

Less than 24 hours later, Morris was fired.

In the Razorbacks’ first game under interim head coach Barry Lunney Jr., Jefferson made his first start - on the road against No. 1 LSU - to become the ninth true freshman starting quarterback in UA history. (A list that, ironically, also includes Lunney.)

That game was sandwiched between starts by a pair of Arkansas legacies in John Stephen Jones and Jack Lindsey, whose grandfathers played on the 1964 national championship team before becoming highly successful businessmen and whose fathers also played for the Razorbacks.

Unfortunately for the Razorbacks, it didn’t matter who was under center. Their starting quarterbacks combined to complete just 47.4 percent of their passes with nine touchdowns and 12 interceptions for a 95.0 quarterback rating. (They were actually better playing in relief, combining for a 121.5 passer rating.)

If the statistics of Arkansas’ starting quarterbacks this season were treated as one player, the 95.0 passer rating would rank 438th out of 445 qualifying seasons by FBS quarterbacks over the last four years. Only two Power Five quarterbacks - Northwestern’s Aidan Smith in 2019 (82.9) and Rutgers’ Artur Sitkowski in 2018 (76.4) - posted worse marks during that span.

It will be a few more years before the book can finally be closed on Morris’ quarterbacks at Arkansas, as Jefferson, Jones and Lindsey are all set to return in 2020 and possibly beyond for the first two.

However, Starkel choosing to join the team against which he threw the most interceptions in a single game by an Arkansas quarterback since Wade Hill in the 1991 Independence Bowl is another wild twist to that story.

He likely hopes to enjoy a resurgence similar to what Storey and Kelley experienced in 2019 once away from Morris - as do the Razorbacks’ remaining quarterbacks.

It’s also possible head coach Sam Pittman and offensive coordinator Kendal Briles might have to dip into the portal for an immediate fix. Regardless how it happens, fans are certainly hoping for a smoother and more successful run at quarterback in this new era of Arkansas football.