Pat Bostick already looks like a different quarterback than the one who started eight games as a ballyhooed freshman last season. That, though, mainly has to do with the 17 pounds he has shed since he and the Panthers ended their season with a wild and wonderful victory in West Virginia.

Bostick is back for his second season at Pitt, eager to see if he can improve on a freshman year that proved to be slightly promising at best, tentative and indecisive at worst. And he will be trying to shed something infinitely more difficult than just a lot of pounds.

Namely, the competition at quarterback.

Coach Dave Wannstedt wasted little time yesterday underscoring the importance of the position, using the first day of spring practice to lay the fortunes of the 2008 Pitt football team almost squarely on the proverbial shoulders of his quarterback, whomever it turns out to be.

"For us to make progress and for us to get better, we have to perform better from the quarterback position," Wannstedt said.

Question is, who will be the quarterback?

Junior Bill Stull, who started the 2007 season opener against Eastern Michigan, only to go down with a thumb injury that required surgery and ended his season, is back after being granted a medical redshirt. When the Panthers lined for their first offensive snap of spring practice at their South Side training facility, Stull was the quarterback for the first-team offense.

Nobody, of course, was more elated than Stull, who was thrilled merely to be back on the field. How long he stays there will be one of the intriguing battles of spring.

"Unbelievable to finally be back," said Stull, who completed 14 of 20 passes for 177 yards and a touchdown against Eastern Michigan in his only action last season. "I haven't put my helmet on for seven months. I can't even express how it feels to finally be back."

Bostick was equally elated, not just because of a new streamlined body that has dropped his weight from 231 pounds (his playing weight last season) to 214 pounds and increased his mobility. But also because of a strength and flexibility program that has improved his arm strength and velocity.

Bostick said he couldn't throw the football beyond 50 yards last season, even, he joked, if the "wind was at my back." This year, with the help of strength coach Buddy Morris, he has increased the range of motion in his right arm and can throw the ball 61 yards in the air.

"Even today, there was one play where I was rolling out and I was thinking while I was running: 'Man, this doesn't seem normal,' " Bostick said. "When you're lighter, you can move better."

Wannstedt, of course, is seeking more mobility at the position, one of the reasons he signed junior-college quarterback Greg Cross, who played at Fort Scott Community College in Kansas and was the offensive player of the year in the Jayhawk Conference.

Cross, a 6-foot-2, 215-pound junior, will use the spring to become more familiar with the Pitt offense, which didn't score more than two touchdowns in six games last season. But Wannstedt did not hide some of his expectations he has for the position when he said, "It's time to start running around a little bit and throwing the ball around."

Then he added: "He's by far the best athlete [of the quarterbacks]. He went to Fort Scott and really turned that program around pretty much by himself. His athletic ability will be something we look closely at and see how we can best utilize that."

Wannstedt's biggest problem in the spring might be having enough time to evaluate all his quarterbacks. In addition to Stull, Bostick and Cross, there is redshirt sophomore Kevan Smith, who started three games last season after Stull was injured before giving way to Bostick.

"Right now, I'm just trying to get back where I was for the last scrimmage and the first game last season," Stull said. "I know what it takes to get the job done, but I also know what it's like to have it taken away."

"The best player will play, and that's what I want for the team," Bostick said. "You want the best guys out there. It's a competition within myself right now. If it's good enough, it's good enough."