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the quarterback mystique
Jan. 3rd, 2009 11:27 am[note: this is a long football post, so feel free to skip if you don't care - I'm just writing it to get it out of my system]
Nebraska won the Gator Bowl, 26-21, beating a very good Clemson team in probably the tightest, tensest, bordering on the most dramatic game I have ever had to suffer through. We were down 14-3 at the half, and 21-10 in the beginning of the 3rd quarter. Basically everyone on the Life in the Red blog had given up - the pessimists were getting nasty, the optimists were signing off. But we came back and won. That post will follow. This post (which has taken me 2.5 days) is about arguably the most important position on a football team - the gunslinger, the cowboy, the general, the leader: the quarterback.
I've always had a thing with quarterbacks. I am not alone. New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton has said it's a position that "gets too much criticism and too much applause." Is the criticism/applause disproportionate? Maybe. But the Quarterback Mystique is a real thing, disproportionate or no. The quarterback is usually the most prominent player on the football team, especially when it comes to media attention. They are also, for reasons unknown to me, often physically attractive. Not all of this is romanticism. The quarterback is also a team's de facto leader - although he presumably follows the coaches' playbook, the quarterback is responsible for getting every single play started, often has to be able to fool the opposing team, is usually the only player on the team that throws the all-valuable ball (which makes him the monopolist of passing, which is one of only four ways a football team can put points on the scoreboard - the other three being rushing, kicking, and safeties), and has to be able to get out of the worst - and I mean, the worst - situations. Although there are certainly other players on the offense that can serve as leaders on and off the field, the quarterback tells the rest of the team what the plan is in every huddle; the quarterback decides if a pass is possible or if the run is better; the quarterback is the one that shouts, "Hut, hut, hike!"
tldr; the quarterback is hella important. Good quarterbacks keep teams alive; great quarterbacks become heroes; bad quarterbacks are burned at the stake. As far as the relationship with fans goes, quarterbacks single-handedly make them come, make them complete, or make them completely miserable. I'd argue there's as much to be learned about leadership from football quarterbacks (and especially college football, but that's a different post) as from any of the other traditional leaders of society: coaches, politicians, generals, activists, Aragorn. Thus I'm going to write about what I call the Quarterback Mystique.
AND IF YOU SEE JOHNNY FOOTBALL HERO IN THE HALL, TELL HIM HE PLAYED A GREAT GAME! TELL HIM YOU LIKED HIS ARTICLE IN THE NEWSPAPER!
I should have opened this whole post with Nada Surf's brilliant "Popular", but oh well, here we go: "I'm a quarterback, I'm popular/ my mom says I'm a catch, I'm popular/ I'm never last picked, I got a cheerleading chick". For reasons mentioned above, the Quarterback Mystique was born. Johnny Football Heroes are forged out of this Mystique. Many of them grow up yearning to play quarterback precisely because of the Mystique, and will stop at nothing to fulfill this their boyhood dream. Thus by the time they become starting quarterbacks they've already got this whole romantic script written out for themselves - one they use to cultivate a mutually sycophantic relationship with their coaches and extensive doting by the media. They are almost always referred to by both first and last name (never just one, the way everybody else is referred to) by commentators, they are always from highly-ranked schools, they're always their head coach's favorite, and they usually fit a certain, well, WASP-y demographic.
Sometimes it really is mysterious, the mystique. A particularly bizarre case is Missouri's Chase Daniel, whose rise in national prominence accompanied Missouri's sudden upward shot to the top of the NCAA in 2007. Nebraska fans call him "Baby Chase" because he is one of the whiniest players we have ever had to play against. But for Missouri and at least part of the national news media, Daniel is a Golden Boy - a Sacred Cow, if you will, the player that everyone needs to kiss the feet of because there will never be another. Golden Boys are a special category of Johnny Football Heroes because they demand to be treated well; they believe they're entitled to worship, often because they consider themselves the best player on the team, and thus a special snowflake. They take pictures like the one seen here of Daniel because they're "growing legends", which to me just sounds like some nasty toe problem that needs to be chopped off. Sometimes, they really are; all the time, it doesn't matter, because that's a terrible attitude for a leader to have. Daniel is pretty much incapable of taking responsibility for things that go wrong - it's "I have a cold", or it's "someone spit on me". And his teammates get in on it too: "Half those interceptions were tipped". Yeah, okay - then don't throw so low? Daniel is particularly nauseatingly pampered by head coach Gary Pinkel - he is often seen embracing Pinkel from behind on the sidelines, and when a fan heckles Daniel, Pinkel himself will yell at the fan. Yes. That is called... well, it is not called teaching the young men you coach responsibility for themselves. Not that I endorse heckling by fans (see "No More Heisman"), but a quarterback needs to be strong enough to handle that without the coach getting involved. A quarterback is not supposed to need people mopping up behind him. That's why he has the Mystique! Remember?!
Other Johnny Football Heroes don't need quite so much clean-up - Colt McCoy and Tim Tebow being two examples. The Texas and Florida quarterbacks have a lot in common: a total of three syllables and monosyllabic first names to start, important facts considering the amount of time television analysts spend jacking off to these two. McCoy can be having a terrible game and this is how the broadcast will sound: silence while things are going badly; as soon as he completes the shortest screen pass, it's "great job by Colt McCoy." O rly? That's a classic symptom of Quarterback Mystique right there. I hesitate to call these two out and out Golden Boys because they aren't bad and they aren't ridiculous like Daniel - but Colt McCoy is a budding Golden Boy, if nothing else because his name makes him sound like an old West hero, he's blonde, and I don't think I've ever heard an announcer criticize him - hell, even after Utah and Alabama played their ball game, Barry Switzer was still harping on about "And what about Colt McCoy..." Ya rly. Totally unrelated game and they still find a way to sneak in a good word about him. Tebow, on the other hand, is a budding dick-quarterback (see "I Like Throwing the Ball Long...") - he's a renowned playboy and party animal at Florida. I have a bad feeling about him. There's yet another trait these two share: rabid Christianity. Tebow's parents are missionaries, and he's spent time personally 
circumcising little Filipino boys. Does this freak out anyone else? McCoy's just one of those Campus Life crazies. I know, I know, religion's a huge part of football. But these two? Something else. In fandom terms, they're Gary Stus - characters that are portrayed as having unrealistically perfect and thus sacred qualities. Nothing bad happens to Gary Stus the way nothing bad ever really happens to McCoy and Tebow. These guys are the elites of football, and you know, kudos to those teams for being at the top of the dogpile - but it doesn't convince me that McCoy and Tebow are the real deal as far as football team leaders go. Texas? Florida? Lots of adversity there. Oklahoma's Sam Bradford hasn't had to deal with hardship either, but at least he shuts his mouth and doesn't mug for the camera. And guess who won the Heisman? Bradford. I think what gave him the edge was that coaches (especially in the Big 12) were fed up with the other two and the silver spoons they feast with. I guess they've had to keep all their resilience in reserve for fighting Satan.
So what happens when Johnny Football Heroes run into adversity? Well... depending on their mentality and their skill level, it can get pretty ugly. It doesn't get a lot uglier than Golden Boy Harrison Beck - a very highly-ranked recruit who everyone thought was going to save the Nebraska Cornhuskers' bacon. He spent one year as a back-up and did pretty poorly whenever he did play, and then in the middle of the 2006 pre-season he literally disappeared - skipped town. Yes, I'm serious. His mother later said that he was upset about the number of reps he was getting, upset that he - a redshirt freshman - wasn't getting enough reps as senior starter Zac Taylor and then-junior Joe Ganz. More on him later. His mother went on to say that Zac Taylor was "just okay", that her son wasn't being given enough help or support or opportunity, and maybe he should have just gone to the SEC, where he'd for sure be getting playing time. In other words, he'd already anointed himself with Eau d' Quarterback Mystique and crowned himself Golden Boy before he did... well... anything. When then-head coach Bill Callahan didn't cater to his demands enough, he threw a tantrum and took off - called it quits, gave up, ran away, etc. In the context of what Joe Ganz had to go through to get to the position of starter, all I can say to Beck is "BAAAAWWW CRY MOAR." So Harrison Beck transferred to South Carolina. Boy, do they love him there. I'm being sarcastic. They liken him to Rex Grossman and make drinking games out of his interceptions. He is in essence the worst of the worst when it comes to Golden Boys, a failed Johnny Football Hero who clearly liked the idea of quarterbacking more than the execution - an apt demonstration of just how bad the Quarterback Mystique can get.
Beck obviously sucks, but even the best Johnny Football Heroes can crash and burn once they get in a less-supportive environment - like the NFL. This seems to be the case with Vince Young, a former Texas quarterback who won the National Championship along with a whole host of individual awards, then left college early to enter the draft. Everyone seemed to want to heap praise on the guy: he's even on ESPN's list of the ten greatest college players ever (a subjective list if there ever was one!), for instance. Young had to deal with his share of adversity - like when he nearly died as a seven-year-old when a car hit him and impaled him on his bicycle handle bar, and his father being in prison throughout most of his college career. No religious slant, but a near-death inspirational experience works just as well. But judging by the way he responded to being booed after throwing an interception for the Tennessee Titans - driving off with a gun after mentioning suicide - I've got doubts that Vince Young's really got what it takes now that the crowd does not treat him like a Johnny Football Hero. As great an athlete as Young clearly is, it's whether he's able to get through this funk that's going to really determine whether he serves as an athletic benchmark for future quarterbacks or as an actual example of leadership and perseverence.
Other Johnny Football Heroes are tougher. Peyton Manning and younger brother Eli Manning are also excellent football players. Both were fawned over incessantly in college (Tennessee and Ole Miss, respectively) and almost incessantly in the pros - but damn, Peyton is the league MVP again this year and has been consistently great at the Indianapolis Colts, and after a bit of a slow start for Eli at the Giants, he's shaping up fine
. So fine they won the Super Bowl last year. These two - the only set of brothers to both win the Super Bowl MVP - are genuine competitors, but what really makes them valid leaders in my book is their easygoing, unselfish personalities. Peyton's always zucchini cool whereas Eli can get a bit more neurotic, but both clearly love the game of football. I always liked Peyton; I used to consider Eli a bit of a whiny Golden Boy when he played for Ole Miss, but in the pros he's shut up and proved tough. It takes real inner strength to command a football team like the Giants to a Super Bowl as a baby-faced twenty-seven-year-old. So now I'm a fan of them both.
So you know - some Johnny Football Heroes do deserve to be called heroes.
WHO THE HELL IS HE ANYWAY? HE NEVER REALLY TALKS MUCH.
And then there's the quarterbacks that are totally ignored by everyone outside the team - sleeper quarterbacks, the opposite of Johnny Football Heroes - they don't talk much and they're not flashy. Of course, many quarterbacks are ignored because they're bad, but many are ignored simply because they don't play for one of the powerhouse schools. A few of these small-school quarterbacks do manage to get hyped, but the only example I can currently think of is Eli Manning when he was at Ole Miss - and he had that older brother named Peyton, so he doesn't really count.
Here's a good example, though: Pat White, senior quarterback of the West Virginia Mountaineers. Some analysts say he's actually the best quarterback in the country, statistically - first and only NCAA player to win four consecutive bowl games as a starter, all-time highest rushing yards by any NCAA quarterback - but he's flown totally under the radar for four years because he plays for West Virginia, which nobody paid attention to even after they beat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl in 2007. Presumably this is because West Virginia has too many syllables, or has a coach whose name isn't Bowden or Stoops, or something. Does this matter a whit? Probably not to Pat White. He has "Mountaineer" tattooed on his arm and came back for his senior year even though he could have gone into the NFL draft, and has a lot of well-earned support among West Virginia fans, who spell out his number 5 in the bleachers, have white-outs, etc. In the end, all that matters is how the team and the fans respond to a quarterback - not the TV pundits. Still, it sucks that he didn't get any buzz, now that awards go to players who play for either Oklahoma, the Florida-school-du-jour, Texas, or USC. Usually four players are invited to go the Heisman Trophy award ceremony, but this year only three players were invited: QBs from Oklahoma, Florida, and Texas. The Texas Tech quarterback, Graham Harrell, was not invited despite being fourth in the votes. Pat White was down there at seventh. Guess Harrell and White should have talked themselves up more, or maybe become missionaries.
Oh yeah, and Brian Johnson for the Utah Utes? The team that defied 10-point-underdog status to beat the Alabama Tide in the Sugar Bowl? The quarterback that very rightly won that game's MVP? Where the hell did he come from, and why have I never heard of him? He wanted to give all credit to his teammates and he actually passed the MVP trophy to them to hold. Of course he did - I bet he never really talked much while he was at Utah. "A great way to finish my college career," he says. Well, great. A college career that no one saw, because he played for Utah - while everyone was obsessing over Alabama's #1 recruiting class, and Goddamn Barry Switzer (who is this fuck anyway? oh, right, a former Oklahoma head coach) says that there's no Utah player that Alabama would recruit, Brian Johnson was out there calmly commanding his offense (and yes, because no one gives a shit about Utah and it's not a traditional football powerhouse, they are a quiet sleeper school and not a well-oiled machine despite going undefeated this year) and winning the Sugar Bowl. Awesome. He seems to feel that he's had a rewarding experience and I'm sure the Utes fans love him, so I guess he gets the last laugh.
Other quarterbacks simply land in awful programs and end up single-handedly propelling the team to wins. Byron Leftwich, one of the most casual, laidback, and un-self-promoting quarterbacks ever - had to do this at Marshall, and didn't seem to mind. People only paid attention to him after he got practically crippled in a game against Akron - broken shin will do that to you - and instead of going out of the game (they didn't have any back-ups worth mentioning, and they were trying to come back from a 17-point deficit), his linemen carried him from scrimmage to scrimmage. Because he could not walk. They won the game, by the way, just like they won this legendary double-overtime bowl game 64-61, after being down 38-8. I should also point out that another sleeper quarterback I mention further down, Chad Pennington, also played for Marshall, where he used a pseudonym while serving as a radio broadcaster so as not to "cause a distraction". Now that's the opposite of self-promotion. But Marshall does have this Boxer-the-Work-Horse sort of mentality, so maybe this is no surprise.
The Quarterback Mystique is sort of lost on these players, at least as far as media attention goes - on the other hand, their own fans adore them, which leads one to wonder if certain rewards come to good quarterbacks in time, whether or not they get hyped, and maybe the Quarterback Mystique can survive in subtle form - as the belated and sincere thanks of a grateful fan base - without the ridiculous pomp that accompanies Johnny Football Heroes. Does this quiet anonymity make them bad leaders? Absolutely not. His teammates wouldn't have carried Leftwich to the line of scrimmage if he wasn't a good leader. In fact, I think sleeper quarterbacks at struggling schools tend to be better leaders - they don't get any help from hype, they actually have to rally the troops, said troops are often pretty destitute, and they have to deal with pissy fans. Assuming they come out of college alive, they sure do prove themselves. So their teams don't always end up with perfect records - the quarterback really can't carry the whole team, no matter how much Leftwich tried. And in case it wasn't obvious, there's much more to leadership than perfect win-loss records, or even really good stats.
I wish I could say that it's just a coincidence that White, Johnson, and Leftwich aren't pasty Caucasian, Christian quarterbacks. I do think that the prominence of the school is a more important factor of why they got ignored by the national media (Vince Young, after all, went to Texas), but I can't say ethnicity doesn't play a factor. The football community's a lot like modern America - they know there's racism and they don't like racism and it gets awkward when racism accusations get thrown around, but de facto, subconscious racism is still there, rippling under the surface of the national media (at certain schools that will remain nameless, it sort of surfs out in the open). A few sleepers do get recognized at the end of the year, after all the ejaculation over the Johnny Football Heroes is over - and after, of course, the Heisman Trophy has been handed out.
I LIKE THROWING THE BALL LONG. IT MAKES MY DICK HARD.
Quarterbacks can be dicks. They can be the biggest dicks on the team. Unfortunately, dickhood does not automatically make someone a bad quarterback statistically, and much less does it make someone an unpopular quarterback. There are quite a few prominent quarterbacks, in both college and the pros, who really think that being quarterback means they are effectively God (not just God's representative, but God) - or at least, God's gift to football and/or women. When nerds write vindictive revenge stories featuring an evil villain of a high school quarterback, this is the kind of quarterback they're writing about: aggressive, selfish, macho pricks.
Kissing Suzy Kolber attributes this style of quarterback to Rex Grossman, a smirk-tastic player that my mother made a season out of hating when he was playing for the Florida Gators: "I'm fucking Sexy Rexy Grossman. I can get that ball in there. And, even if I can't, I bet I'll be able to pull it off the next go round. I like throwing the ball long. It makes my dick hard... You know what? Not only am I gonna throw it long the next time we hit the field. I'm gonna throw it even longer. Harder... Why? Because I can." (note: this is not an actual quote by Grossman, merely a projection of his inner monologue) Grossman's famous for thinking he can do anything. I'm all for dream-big as much as the next soul, but when it gets to the point of irrational over-valuation of your own abilities - when it's not "I gotta make this happen for the team" anymore, because you're making cocky, selfish decisions that aren't even good for the team (like throwing long passes when you should be making shorter ones, when you should actually be seeing who the hell is open so as to avoid an interception) - it may be time to take up the Vegas nightclub circuit instead of a football. The final moment of Grossman's college career was insisting that he could somehow get off a long pass (of course! only long passes are macho!) by himself, running around with a horde of defenders in the backfield. Even the announcers were laughing: "What are you doin', Rex? What are you doin'?" Needless to say, it failed. Grossman's also become famous in the NFL for being totally incapable of taking criticism. When the media criticizes him, he tells them in a press conference that they "don't know much" and they should admit to being ignorant and incorrect. And then the media laughs at him. His own coach at the Chicago Bears, Lovie Smith, says "the criticism is what it is." Never a good sign. I could make all sorts of DBZ analogies here, but I'll try and contain myself.
Good luck, Bears. Hope you find an actual quarterback soon. I still love you.
Perhaps a less extreme example is USC quarterback Mark Sanchez. He's basically a frat brat who's gotten in trouble for sexual assault and breaking windows - hurdles that some schools would not let a player jump over, but not USC! USC tolerates this bullshit. He's not actually a great quarterback, but he does play for a very strong football team, so he never gets sacked and he gets to look great. After winning the Rose Bowl this year - basically a home game - he jumped up on a pedestal and started conducting the band. That's behavior that would get fined for like $10,000 in the NFL. The NFL. You know, the league that doesn't care if you're a good sport? Yeah, them. Then again, this whole team has dick-ish tendencies, if their boorish dances on the field - with coaches, nonetheless - after they do something successful are any indication. But there you go, USC can get away with that kind of behavior. Coupled with the total lack of adversity that Sanchez has had to face (other than the Rape Awareness class, that is), his poor sportsmanship gets him equally poor leadership points.
The NFL has quite a few dick quarterbacks too, and that's to be expected. They are getting paid millions of dollars for their "sexy cannon" arms, after all - and they're playing to profit, not for love of the team or love of the game. Everybody in the NFL is a bit of an arrogant jackass and as we know the quarterback position is conducive to braggadocio, so it gets hard to sort out the particularly pricky quarterbacks. Personally, I'm sickened by Tom Brady and Tony Romo - not for their behavior on the field, but for their cocky, entitled, macho behavior off of it. Tom Brady of the New England Patriots does shirtless cologne ads a la Marlboro Man
and has not only an illegitimate child off an actress (who still named the boy after him, bless her pathetic heart) but is dating Gisele, the supermodel. Tony Romo of the Dallas Cowboys has dated Carrie Underwood and Jessica Simpson, among other cheerful blondes, and gets so distracted by Simpson that he can't play football when she's in the stands. Would rather be at a resort with her, I guess. Does this automatically make them dicks? Well, no. It just makes them look like they really want to take as much advantage of being Johnny Football Heroes as possible by fucking as many "it" girls as possible. Also makes them look uncommitted to their teams. That and they take themselves too seriously. Cologne? Are you serious? Jesus. Advertise soup with your mother or something.
To say that these guys buy into the Quarterback Mystique is an understatement - there's no smoke and mirrors needed here, no legends and fog machines. You know that P. Diddy commercial where he jetskis in a tuxedo and says, "I am king"? Yeah. "And all the girlies say I'm pretty fly, for a white guy." I don't think I've talked about this before, but I don't buy bad-ass-ery in politics either. People like Rahm Emanuel actually really piss me off, and don't even get me started on Bill Clinton. I don't think all that brouhaha makes you a good leader - no more than landing on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit made Bush a good president - how can it, when all you care about is yourself, the way you look in the mirror or on SportsCenter, and yourdick arm? I guess "if you don't break, just overcompensate, at least you know you can always go on Ricki Lake."
"NO MORE HEISMAN!"
But not all quarterbacks are dicks. The quarterbacks that don't salivate over cameras and who put their team first are actually okay guys. And often, they're the ones that get the most abuse. Sadly, it is rare that this abuse strikes dick-quarterbacks, because people seem to be instinctively lulled into submission by dick behavior, and of course, nobody touches the Golden Boys. And to be fair, a lot of people treat quarterbacks like total shit - defensive tackles and ends make careers out of breaking quarterbacks as hard as humanly possible, fans of opposing teams zero in on them as Public Enemy #1, and their own fans blame them for essentially everything.
I once wrote revised lyrics to "The Last Supper" from Jesus Christ Superstar while watching some poor quarterback get repeatedly sacked because his offensive line was incompetent. It was an ode to the quarterback, and it went something along the lines of, "Look at all my non-existent linemen/ sinking in a gentle pool of slime" and "don't disturb me now, I can see a receiver". And of course, "Always hoped that I'd be a quarterback/ knew that I would make it if I tried." Although what I mainly shout when my team's offense on the field is "Go!", I can also be heard screaming, "Protect him!" to the offensive line.
It's one thing to cheer when your team makes a defensive stop and it's another to single out one player on the opposing team to taunt. Especially if said player is not a dick-quarterback, but just a good, highly-touted quarterback. I have major problems with the Colorado Buffaloes football program and its faithful - Gary Barnett has to be one of the least disciplined coaches ever - but high on my list of Colorado fans' offenses is them chanting, "No more Heisman!" to Nebraska's Eric Crouch after the Buffaloes beat the Huskers the year Crouch was in the running for the Heisman. What the fuck? I mean, what the fuck. These are college kids! I don't even like Ole Miss fans chanting "Overrated!" to the entire Texas Tech team, but an entire stadium taunting one specific player on the opposing team who did nothing unseemly except try to win the game? In college, that's grotesque. And of course that one specific player is always going to be the quarterback... a side effect, again, of Ye Olde Quarterback Mystique. Colorado fans proved themselves even classier when they shone laser-pointers in the Oklahoma State quarterback's eye in 2008. Once again: what the fuck.
What truly sucks, however, is to be torn apart by your own team. Nate Longshore, a quarterback for the California (Berkeley) Bears, would be a Golden Boy - he's got the religious trappings and blonde hair and everything - except he's not that great, California's still a struggling school, and their fans are downright cruel. I only saw one Cal game this season - a very messy bowl victory over Miami - and almost every play by Longshore was booed by his own crowd. This isn't so atypical in the pros, but in college this type of backstabbing is way out of line. They aren't playing for money, they're playing for fun and they're playing for you - and they are not professionals. Part of what's going to ruin college football is pro-creep, I swear - the expectation of statistical perfection and refrigerator-sized linemen - when in reality these players are student athletes. Apparently a different quarterback was waiting in the wings behind Longshore. But that's no excuse to boo your quarterback when he makes an incomplete pass. If you have to boo, at least boo the grown-up coaches who are getting paid millions of dollars. Please don't boo the players. And for the love of God, do not play a team song when someone is injured on the field. Please. Christ.
Besides which, scorned quarterbacks can prove dangerous. As Harrison Beck proves, they can also prove utterly useless, so I should qualify: good scorned quarterbacks can prove dangerous. Chad Pennington got dumped by the New York Jets in favor of Brett Favre, after enduring a nasty season filled with such niceties as being booed off the field (the season prior to this he was pretty much responsible for every win the Jets had) and hearing fans cheer when he got injured. Why am I a long-distance Jets fan? I don't know - I guess I just can't root for the Giants, but believe me, I never applaud injuries. Now that I'm leaving New York I may just end up following around Pennington, the Mannings, and cheering for the Eagles. Pennington's justifiably got nothing but bitterness for his former team. I have a soft spot for the guy, who never really talked much, and I'm happy to say he's playing great for the Miami Dolphins this year. Something about Comeback Player of the Year. They're going to the playoffs. The Jets and Favre are not, thanks personally to a defeat handed to them by Pennington's Dolphins. "What goes around comes around," says Garth Woolsey of the Toronto Star. "Revenge, thy name is Chad."
Former Johnny Football Hero Brett Favre hasn't had the best experience with the Jets either. Not only are fans disappointed with his performance (which, admittedly, has been bad relative to Brett Favre: Football Hero), but his own runningbacks are starting to diss his performance. The coach that wanted him's been fired and as we all know, the only person who gets as much friendly fire as the coach is the quarterback. Commentators don't care about his injured shoulder and dismiss his post-season mulling about retiring as empty talk. Of course, the runningbacks have a right to be frustrated with three interceptions per game, and Brett Favre has mulled retirement more than once (I would hardly classify the guy as a dick quarterback, though). Brett Favre is supposed to be their leader, not their moaner-giver-upper. And that's why, despite the intensity of the abuse that many quarterbacks have to endure, the quarterback has to take his lumps and swim upriver anyway. It's just how the game's set up.
Crouch won his Heisman after all. It can be done.
"WHAT DOES JOE GANZ DO NOW?" "JOE GANZ TAKES SOME ADVIL."
A final note: I tend to judge quarterbacks based on values I picked up watching Nebraska football, so I think it's fair to explain what these values are.
Nebraska's last nationally-prominent quarterback was Eric Crouch in 2001 - unsurprisingly, Crouch was playing when the Nebraska football program was nationally-prominent as well. I was a little bit in love with him when he played here - in all fairness to me, I was in middle school. He was a great runner, a good receiver, and an okay passer - but that's okay, it is Nebraska. He had his oh-so-intense picture on the cover of Sports Illustrated and did win that Heisman trophy (though he succumbed to the Heisman curse in the National Championship game). Like many quarterbacks at top 10 schools, Crouch totally bought into his own Quarterback Mystique. He was in love with the position. Post-Nebraska, he made a complete fool of himself bouncing from the NFL to Germany to Canada, searching for a way to play quarterback even after people had repeatedly told him that he was better off at a different position - Crouch wanted to be Johnny Football Hero and thought the only way to achieve greatness was to play quarterback. While I don't doubt Crouch is fond of Nebraska (and indeed, he's been coming back here more since realizing he peaked in college), it became obvious after he graduated that he wasn't really the kind of player that put the team first, and was not really the perfect Nebraska quarterback.
Which brings me to my current favorite quarterback, Nebraska's own Joe Ganz. Joey Ganz as some still call him. Ganz is, to put it simply, everything I want in a quarterback. He is, first off, perfect for Nebraska: a good runner, a tough player, and a solid, humble leader that plays the hell out of games despite crazy adversity. You know Nebraska: where the boys are the squarest, the play isn't pretty, and we expect to win by "powering through" (oh boy). That he can pass is just bonus. Personally, I'm also a huge fan of his constant healthy sarcasm and obvious maturity. I have literally never encountered a football player as sarcastic as this guy (sports writers call it "coolness" because they don't know what it is). Oh yeah, and I happen to think he's cute. What can I say, I grew out of my pretty boy stage. He gets an extra picture because he deserves it.
Joe Ganz was pretty much fucked over by Bill Callahan. He spent 2006 as No. 2 and then got by-passed again in 2007 - this time in favor of Sam Keller, a flashy transfer who according to the UNL underground had family connections to Callahan. Ganz became "the quarterback that could have been, but wasn't." Keller got the love; Keller got the playing time. Did Keller play well? Eh. When Ganz finally got the chance to play (season-ending injury for Keller), he was stunning. Ganz started in 2008 with one year left in eligibility, and has broken I don't want to know how many all-time Nebraska records in this one wonderful year. He was also fucked over by timing, because although he's statistically excellent he's playing in the same conference as the Big 12 powerhouse quarterbacks, McCoy, Bradford, and Harrell - so he gets ignored by the national media. Not to mention, Nebraska's a struggling school this year, making Ganz a sleeper. In football terms, one of his years was essentially wasted here. Most fans have gotten behind Ganz and are sorry he had to have so much playing opportunity flushed down the toilet, but when I hear from the few that haven't (like "stay down joey, we need a better qb" - that shit, which is not too far from the Jets fans cheering Chad Pennington getting injured, makes me physically ill), I seriously think that if I was Ganz, I might just turn around and give the haters the big Fuck You.
Instead Ganz gets up every fall-semester Saturday (and the occasional Friday and Thursday) and plays his ass off. He doesn't quit. Shit happens and he doesn't quit, because well, that's the thing about shit - it happens. S.S.D.D., to quote another great group of friends in Stephen King's Dreamcatcher. Then he gets up, he adjusts, and he tries again. Hell, even if he fumbles the ball and the other team starts running it back for a touchdown, he will go and tackle that returner personally. Yes, here at Nebraska, quarterbacks are expected to tackle, too. He never gives up - he never wilts, as current head coach Bo Pelini says. And the team takes their cue from him. He cares about being a role model for younger players, gives credit where it's due, and takes every opportunity to praise his teammates and his coaches. Surprise, the team plays well under Ganz's leadership. The coaches know they can rely on him in the huddle - it's like having that older kid looking after the young ones, you know, one less thing to worry about. Of course, Ganz can also play good football. He's a talented guy who knows his shit and completes huge plays when they're most needed (like on 3rd-and-10). We would not - and I can't stress this enough - the Huskers would not have nine wins this season without him. He took us from a depressed and mopey 5-7 team in 2007 to an energetic and jacked-up 9-4 team in 2008. Skill is a vital part of this. But so is tenacity. And that is something that some of those other quarterbacks - Colt McCoy, Tim Tebow - just don't have. How could they? They're on top 10 teams and have ridden the coattails of their 5-star teammates and their own popularity. With all due respect to those guys, they haven't had to bounce back from anything. So go ahead and dance, Mark Sanchez. Go conduct your orchestra. Tell me about your trials and tribulations. Have none? Oh, okay.
Nebraska quarterbacks are supposed to be able to take their licks, so they don't do pansy moves like running out of bounds or sliding baseball-style across the first down mark to avoid getting tackled. They just get tackled (or sometimes they get their heads twisted around exorcist-style). Ganz has taken his share of monster hits too. In the fourth quarter of the Gator Bowl - after a successful high-pressure completed pass - he was tackled and pushed to the ground face-first. Then he just lay there - took off his own helmet and lay there (see below, with concerned runningback Marlon Lucky). And Joe Ganz, let me tell you, never just lies there. He's said that he would have to be "peeled off the field." He'd already started limping in the first half and now, what? Concussion, apparently. He was helped off the field and his back-up immediately fumbled the ball - I went to take a walk to cool my nerves. I prayed for a win but I also prayed for Joe Ganz to be okay. He was back on the next offensive series. He got them all the way to the final field goal. "There was no doubt in my mind," says Coach Pelini, that Ganz would be back after that hit. Just a mild concussion, after all. He went on to win the game MVP, a trophy he wants to cut up and split with the defense. But you know why he won that MVP, despite two turnovers? Because he's the quarterback. Because he's a great quarterback who fulfilled his responsibilities to a team that needed him: leading them to victory, not just by the plays he made but by his emotional core, by what many sports writers covering the game have called his guts. That's why it's more than plays and stats and X's and O's - that's why it matters whether the quarterback is a dick or not. It matters how he treats his teammates. It matters if he makes excuses. When the team is not some monstrous powerhouse well-oiled machine - when the team has had to struggle - the heart of the team is the quarterback. So it's on the quarterback to get them to that win, even if the other players are the ones actually running into the end zone. It's a hard task, but if he succeeds, to the quarterback go the spoils. Asked what was next for him after the game - hinting at NFL plans - he said, "Joe Ganz takes some Advil."
Okay, I should stop. I could go on and on about Joe Ganz. I'm going to seriously miss him next year. I hope he comes back to Nebraska somehow - grad assistant, perhaps? - because he's the kind of quarterback you would want young players to take after. He wants to be remembered "as someone who shut up, worked hard, never complained and left everything that I had on that field." And there you have it. I couldn't ask for anything more.Except I ♥ You, Joe Ganz, please marry me!
The Nebraska Quarterback: Joe Ganz
My conclusion about the Quarterback Mystique is that the best quarterbacks are the ones that don't buy into it; or rather, the quarterbacks who recognize their responsibilities to the team but don't obsess over the benefits. The ones who don't think they're any better than anybody else on the team (or the coaching staff), even if their burden is bigger. They put the team first. And not that the quarterback should be blamed for having a lucky season and outstanding teammates, but the quarterback that has to get through rough patches and dry spells is the one that actually proves himself. Arguably, the best politicians do the same. Those are the only "leaders" that I consider real leaders.
And God, I wish this were obvious to everyone.
Nebraska won the Gator Bowl, 26-21, beating a very good Clemson team in probably the tightest, tensest, bordering on the most dramatic game I have ever had to suffer through. We were down 14-3 at the half, and 21-10 in the beginning of the 3rd quarter. Basically everyone on the Life in the Red blog had given up - the pessimists were getting nasty, the optimists were signing off. But we came back and won. That post will follow. This post (which has taken me 2.5 days) is about arguably the most important position on a football team - the gunslinger, the cowboy, the general, the leader: the quarterback.
I've always had a thing with quarterbacks. I am not alone. New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton has said it's a position that "gets too much criticism and too much applause." Is the criticism/applause disproportionate? Maybe. But the Quarterback Mystique is a real thing, disproportionate or no. The quarterback is usually the most prominent player on the football team, especially when it comes to media attention. They are also, for reasons unknown to me, often physically attractive. Not all of this is romanticism. The quarterback is also a team's de facto leader - although he presumably follows the coaches' playbook, the quarterback is responsible for getting every single play started, often has to be able to fool the opposing team, is usually the only player on the team that throws the all-valuable ball (which makes him the monopolist of passing, which is one of only four ways a football team can put points on the scoreboard - the other three being rushing, kicking, and safeties), and has to be able to get out of the worst - and I mean, the worst - situations. Although there are certainly other players on the offense that can serve as leaders on and off the field, the quarterback tells the rest of the team what the plan is in every huddle; the quarterback decides if a pass is possible or if the run is better; the quarterback is the one that shouts, "Hut, hut, hike!"
tldr; the quarterback is hella important. Good quarterbacks keep teams alive; great quarterbacks become heroes; bad quarterbacks are burned at the stake. As far as the relationship with fans goes, quarterbacks single-handedly make them come, make them complete, or make them completely miserable. I'd argue there's as much to be learned about leadership from football quarterbacks (and especially college football, but that's a different post) as from any of the other traditional leaders of society: coaches, politicians, generals, activists, Aragorn. Thus I'm going to write about what I call the Quarterback Mystique.
AND IF YOU SEE JOHNNY FOOTBALL HERO IN THE HALL, TELL HIM HE PLAYED A GREAT GAME! TELL HIM YOU LIKED HIS ARTICLE IN THE NEWSPAPER!
I should have opened this whole post with Nada Surf's brilliant "Popular", but oh well, here we go: "I'm a quarterback, I'm popular/ my mom says I'm a catch, I'm popular/ I'm never last picked, I got a cheerleading chick". For reasons mentioned above, the Quarterback Mystique was born. Johnny Football Heroes are forged out of this Mystique. Many of them grow up yearning to play quarterback precisely because of the Mystique, and will stop at nothing to fulfill this their boyhood dream. Thus by the time they become starting quarterbacks they've already got this whole romantic script written out for themselves - one they use to cultivate a mutually sycophantic relationship with their coaches and extensive doting by the media. They are almost always referred to by both first and last name (never just one, the way everybody else is referred to) by commentators, they are always from highly-ranked schools, they're always their head coach's favorite, and they usually fit a certain, well, WASP-y demographic.
Sometimes it really is mysterious, the mystique. A particularly bizarre case is Missouri's Chase Daniel, whose rise in national prominence accompanied Missouri's sudden upward shot to the top of the NCAA in 2007. Nebraska fans call him "Baby Chase" because he is one of the whiniest players we have ever had to play against. But for Missouri and at least part of the national news media, Daniel is a Golden Boy - a Sacred Cow, if you will, the player that everyone needs to kiss the feet of because there will never be another. Golden Boys are a special category of Johnny Football Heroes because they demand to be treated well; they believe they're entitled to worship, often because they consider themselves the best player on the team, and thus a special snowflake. They take pictures like the one seen here of Daniel because they're "growing legends", which to me just sounds like some nasty toe problem that needs to be chopped off. Sometimes, they really are; all the time, it doesn't matter, because that's a terrible attitude for a leader to have. Daniel is pretty much incapable of taking responsibility for things that go wrong - it's "I have a cold", or it's "someone spit on me". And his teammates get in on it too: "Half those interceptions were tipped". Yeah, okay - then don't throw so low? Daniel is particularly nauseatingly pampered by head coach Gary Pinkel - he is often seen embracing Pinkel from behind on the sidelines, and when a fan heckles Daniel, Pinkel himself will yell at the fan. Yes. That is called... well, it is not called teaching the young men you coach responsibility for themselves. Not that I endorse heckling by fans (see "No More Heisman"), but a quarterback needs to be strong enough to handle that without the coach getting involved. A quarterback is not supposed to need people mopping up behind him. That's why he has the Mystique! Remember?!Other Johnny Football Heroes don't need quite so much clean-up - Colt McCoy and Tim Tebow being two examples. The Texas and Florida quarterbacks have a lot in common: a total of three syllables and monosyllabic first names to start, important facts considering the amount of time television analysts spend jacking off to these two. McCoy can be having a terrible game and this is how the broadcast will sound: silence while things are going badly; as soon as he completes the shortest screen pass, it's "great job by Colt McCoy." O rly? That's a classic symptom of Quarterback Mystique right there. I hesitate to call these two out and out Golden Boys because they aren't bad and they aren't ridiculous like Daniel - but Colt McCoy is a budding Golden Boy, if nothing else because his name makes him sound like an old West hero, he's blonde, and I don't think I've ever heard an announcer criticize him - hell, even after Utah and Alabama played their ball game, Barry Switzer was still harping on about "And what about Colt McCoy..." Ya rly. Totally unrelated game and they still find a way to sneak in a good word about him. Tebow, on the other hand, is a budding dick-quarterback (see "I Like Throwing the Ball Long...") - he's a renowned playboy and party animal at Florida. I have a bad feeling about him. There's yet another trait these two share: rabid Christianity. Tebow's parents are missionaries, and he's spent time personally circumcising little Filipino boys. Does this freak out anyone else? McCoy's just one of those Campus Life crazies. I know, I know, religion's a huge part of football. But these two? Something else. In fandom terms, they're Gary Stus - characters that are portrayed as having unrealistically perfect and thus sacred qualities. Nothing bad happens to Gary Stus the way nothing bad ever really happens to McCoy and Tebow. These guys are the elites of football, and you know, kudos to those teams for being at the top of the dogpile - but it doesn't convince me that McCoy and Tebow are the real deal as far as football team leaders go. Texas? Florida? Lots of adversity there. Oklahoma's Sam Bradford hasn't had to deal with hardship either, but at least he shuts his mouth and doesn't mug for the camera. And guess who won the Heisman? Bradford. I think what gave him the edge was that coaches (especially in the Big 12) were fed up with the other two and the silver spoons they feast with. I guess they've had to keep all their resilience in reserve for fighting Satan.So what happens when Johnny Football Heroes run into adversity? Well... depending on their mentality and their skill level, it can get pretty ugly. It doesn't get a lot uglier than Golden Boy Harrison Beck - a very highly-ranked recruit who everyone thought was going to save the Nebraska Cornhuskers' bacon. He spent one year as a back-up and did pretty poorly whenever he did play, and then in the middle of the 2006 pre-season he literally disappeared - skipped town. Yes, I'm serious. His mother later said that he was upset about the number of reps he was getting, upset that he - a redshirt freshman - wasn't getting enough reps as senior starter Zac Taylor and then-junior Joe Ganz. More on him later. His mother went on to say that Zac Taylor was "just okay", that her son wasn't being given enough help or support or opportunity, and maybe he should have just gone to the SEC, where he'd for sure be getting playing time. In other words, he'd already anointed himself with Eau d' Quarterback Mystique and crowned himself Golden Boy before he did... well... anything. When then-head coach Bill Callahan didn't cater to his demands enough, he threw a tantrum and took off - called it quits, gave up, ran away, etc. In the context of what Joe Ganz had to go through to get to the position of starter, all I can say to Beck is "BAAAAWWW CRY MOAR." So Harrison Beck transferred to South Carolina. Boy, do they love him there. I'm being sarcastic. They liken him to Rex Grossman and make drinking games out of his interceptions. He is in essence the worst of the worst when it comes to Golden Boys, a failed Johnny Football Hero who clearly liked the idea of quarterbacking more than the execution - an apt demonstration of just how bad the Quarterback Mystique can get. Beck obviously sucks, but even the best Johnny Football Heroes can crash and burn once they get in a less-supportive environment - like the NFL. This seems to be the case with Vince Young, a former Texas quarterback who won the National Championship along with a whole host of individual awards, then left college early to enter the draft. Everyone seemed to want to heap praise on the guy: he's even on ESPN's list of the ten greatest college players ever (a subjective list if there ever was one!), for instance. Young had to deal with his share of adversity - like when he nearly died as a seven-year-old when a car hit him and impaled him on his bicycle handle bar, and his father being in prison throughout most of his college career. No religious slant, but a near-death inspirational experience works just as well. But judging by the way he responded to being booed after throwing an interception for the Tennessee Titans - driving off with a gun after mentioning suicide - I've got doubts that Vince Young's really got what it takes now that the crowd does not treat him like a Johnny Football Hero. As great an athlete as Young clearly is, it's whether he's able to get through this funk that's going to really determine whether he serves as an athletic benchmark for future quarterbacks or as an actual example of leadership and perseverence.Other Johnny Football Heroes are tougher. Peyton Manning and younger brother Eli Manning are also excellent football players. Both were fawned over incessantly in college (Tennessee and Ole Miss, respectively) and almost incessantly in the pros - but damn, Peyton is the league MVP again this year and has been consistently great at the Indianapolis Colts, and after a bit of a slow start for Eli at the Giants, he's shaping up fine. So fine they won the Super Bowl last year. These two - the only set of brothers to both win the Super Bowl MVP - are genuine competitors, but what really makes them valid leaders in my book is their easygoing, unselfish personalities. Peyton's always zucchini cool whereas Eli can get a bit more neurotic, but both clearly love the game of football. I always liked Peyton; I used to consider Eli a bit of a whiny Golden Boy when he played for Ole Miss, but in the pros he's shut up and proved tough. It takes real inner strength to command a football team like the Giants to a Super Bowl as a baby-faced twenty-seven-year-old. So now I'm a fan of them both.So you know - some Johnny Football Heroes do deserve to be called heroes.
WHO THE HELL IS HE ANYWAY? HE NEVER REALLY TALKS MUCH.
And then there's the quarterbacks that are totally ignored by everyone outside the team - sleeper quarterbacks, the opposite of Johnny Football Heroes - they don't talk much and they're not flashy. Of course, many quarterbacks are ignored because they're bad, but many are ignored simply because they don't play for one of the powerhouse schools. A few of these small-school quarterbacks do manage to get hyped, but the only example I can currently think of is Eli Manning when he was at Ole Miss - and he had that older brother named Peyton, so he doesn't really count.
Here's a good example, though: Pat White, senior quarterback of the West Virginia Mountaineers. Some analysts say he's actually the best quarterback in the country, statistically - first and only NCAA player to win four consecutive bowl games as a starter, all-time highest rushing yards by any NCAA quarterback - but he's flown totally under the radar for four years because he plays for West Virginia, which nobody paid attention to even after they beat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl in 2007. Presumably this is because West Virginia has too many syllables, or has a coach whose name isn't Bowden or Stoops, or something. Does this matter a whit? Probably not to Pat White. He has "Mountaineer" tattooed on his arm and came back for his senior year even though he could have gone into the NFL draft, and has a lot of well-earned support among West Virginia fans, who spell out his number 5 in the bleachers, have white-outs, etc. In the end, all that matters is how the team and the fans respond to a quarterback - not the TV pundits. Still, it sucks that he didn't get any buzz, now that awards go to players who play for either Oklahoma, the Florida-school-du-jour, Texas, or USC. Usually four players are invited to go the Heisman Trophy award ceremony, but this year only three players were invited: QBs from Oklahoma, Florida, and Texas. The Texas Tech quarterback, Graham Harrell, was not invited despite being fourth in the votes. Pat White was down there at seventh. Guess Harrell and White should have talked themselves up more, or maybe become missionaries. Oh yeah, and Brian Johnson for the Utah Utes? The team that defied 10-point-underdog status to beat the Alabama Tide in the Sugar Bowl? The quarterback that very rightly won that game's MVP? Where the hell did he come from, and why have I never heard of him? He wanted to give all credit to his teammates and he actually passed the MVP trophy to them to hold. Of course he did - I bet he never really talked much while he was at Utah. "A great way to finish my college career," he says. Well, great. A college career that no one saw, because he played for Utah - while everyone was obsessing over Alabama's #1 recruiting class, and Goddamn Barry Switzer (who is this fuck anyway? oh, right, a former Oklahoma head coach) says that there's no Utah player that Alabama would recruit, Brian Johnson was out there calmly commanding his offense (and yes, because no one gives a shit about Utah and it's not a traditional football powerhouse, they are a quiet sleeper school and not a well-oiled machine despite going undefeated this year) and winning the Sugar Bowl. Awesome. He seems to feel that he's had a rewarding experience and I'm sure the Utes fans love him, so I guess he gets the last laugh. Other quarterbacks simply land in awful programs and end up single-handedly propelling the team to wins. Byron Leftwich, one of the most casual, laidback, and un-self-promoting quarterbacks ever - had to do this at Marshall, and didn't seem to mind. People only paid attention to him after he got practically crippled in a game against Akron - broken shin will do that to you - and instead of going out of the game (they didn't have any back-ups worth mentioning, and they were trying to come back from a 17-point deficit), his linemen carried him from scrimmage to scrimmage. Because he could not walk. They won the game, by the way, just like they won this legendary double-overtime bowl game 64-61, after being down 38-8. I should also point out that another sleeper quarterback I mention further down, Chad Pennington, also played for Marshall, where he used a pseudonym while serving as a radio broadcaster so as not to "cause a distraction". Now that's the opposite of self-promotion. But Marshall does have this Boxer-the-Work-Horse sort of mentality, so maybe this is no surprise.The Quarterback Mystique is sort of lost on these players, at least as far as media attention goes - on the other hand, their own fans adore them, which leads one to wonder if certain rewards come to good quarterbacks in time, whether or not they get hyped, and maybe the Quarterback Mystique can survive in subtle form - as the belated and sincere thanks of a grateful fan base - without the ridiculous pomp that accompanies Johnny Football Heroes. Does this quiet anonymity make them bad leaders? Absolutely not. His teammates wouldn't have carried Leftwich to the line of scrimmage if he wasn't a good leader. In fact, I think sleeper quarterbacks at struggling schools tend to be better leaders - they don't get any help from hype, they actually have to rally the troops, said troops are often pretty destitute, and they have to deal with pissy fans. Assuming they come out of college alive, they sure do prove themselves. So their teams don't always end up with perfect records - the quarterback really can't carry the whole team, no matter how much Leftwich tried. And in case it wasn't obvious, there's much more to leadership than perfect win-loss records, or even really good stats.
I wish I could say that it's just a coincidence that White, Johnson, and Leftwich aren't pasty Caucasian, Christian quarterbacks. I do think that the prominence of the school is a more important factor of why they got ignored by the national media (Vince Young, after all, went to Texas), but I can't say ethnicity doesn't play a factor. The football community's a lot like modern America - they know there's racism and they don't like racism and it gets awkward when racism accusations get thrown around, but de facto, subconscious racism is still there, rippling under the surface of the national media (at certain schools that will remain nameless, it sort of surfs out in the open). A few sleepers do get recognized at the end of the year, after all the ejaculation over the Johnny Football Heroes is over - and after, of course, the Heisman Trophy has been handed out.
I LIKE THROWING THE BALL LONG. IT MAKES MY DICK HARD.
Quarterbacks can be dicks. They can be the biggest dicks on the team. Unfortunately, dickhood does not automatically make someone a bad quarterback statistically, and much less does it make someone an unpopular quarterback. There are quite a few prominent quarterbacks, in both college and the pros, who really think that being quarterback means they are effectively God (not just God's representative, but God) - or at least, God's gift to football and/or women. When nerds write vindictive revenge stories featuring an evil villain of a high school quarterback, this is the kind of quarterback they're writing about: aggressive, selfish, macho pricks.
Kissing Suzy Kolber attributes this style of quarterback to Rex Grossman, a smirk-tastic player that my mother made a season out of hating when he was playing for the Florida Gators: "I'm fucking Sexy Rexy Grossman. I can get that ball in there. And, even if I can't, I bet I'll be able to pull it off the next go round. I like throwing the ball long. It makes my dick hard... You know what? Not only am I gonna throw it long the next time we hit the field. I'm gonna throw it even longer. Harder... Why? Because I can." (note: this is not an actual quote by Grossman, merely a projection of his inner monologue) Grossman's famous for thinking he can do anything. I'm all for dream-big as much as the next soul, but when it gets to the point of irrational over-valuation of your own abilities - when it's not "I gotta make this happen for the team" anymore, because you're making cocky, selfish decisions that aren't even good for the team (like throwing long passes when you should be making shorter ones, when you should actually be seeing who the hell is open so as to avoid an interception) - it may be time to take up the Vegas nightclub circuit instead of a football. The final moment of Grossman's college career was insisting that he could somehow get off a long pass (of course! only long passes are macho!) by himself, running around with a horde of defenders in the backfield. Even the announcers were laughing: "What are you doin', Rex? What are you doin'?" Needless to say, it failed. Grossman's also become famous in the NFL for being totally incapable of taking criticism. When the media criticizes him, he tells them in a press conference that they "don't know much" and they should admit to being ignorant and incorrect. And then the media laughs at him. His own coach at the Chicago Bears, Lovie Smith, says "the criticism is what it is." Never a good sign. I could make all sorts of DBZ analogies here, but I'll try and contain myself.Good luck, Bears. Hope you find an actual quarterback soon. I still love you.
Perhaps a less extreme example is USC quarterback Mark Sanchez. He's basically a frat brat who's gotten in trouble for sexual assault and breaking windows - hurdles that some schools would not let a player jump over, but not USC! USC tolerates this bullshit. He's not actually a great quarterback, but he does play for a very strong football team, so he never gets sacked and he gets to look great. After winning the Rose Bowl this year - basically a home game - he jumped up on a pedestal and started conducting the band. That's behavior that would get fined for like $10,000 in the NFL. The NFL. You know, the league that doesn't care if you're a good sport? Yeah, them. Then again, this whole team has dick-ish tendencies, if their boorish dances on the field - with coaches, nonetheless - after they do something successful are any indication. But there you go, USC can get away with that kind of behavior. Coupled with the total lack of adversity that Sanchez has had to face (other than the Rape Awareness class, that is), his poor sportsmanship gets him equally poor leadership points.The NFL has quite a few dick quarterbacks too, and that's to be expected. They are getting paid millions of dollars for their "sexy cannon" arms, after all - and they're playing to profit, not for love of the team or love of the game. Everybody in the NFL is a bit of an arrogant jackass and as we know the quarterback position is conducive to braggadocio, so it gets hard to sort out the particularly pricky quarterbacks. Personally, I'm sickened by Tom Brady and Tony Romo - not for their behavior on the field, but for their cocky, entitled, macho behavior off of it. Tom Brady of the New England Patriots does shirtless cologne ads a la Marlboro Man and has not only an illegitimate child off an actress (who still named the boy after him, bless her pathetic heart) but is dating Gisele, the supermodel. Tony Romo of the Dallas Cowboys has dated Carrie Underwood and Jessica Simpson, among other cheerful blondes, and gets so distracted by Simpson that he can't play football when she's in the stands. Would rather be at a resort with her, I guess. Does this automatically make them dicks? Well, no. It just makes them look like they really want to take as much advantage of being Johnny Football Heroes as possible by fucking as many "it" girls as possible. Also makes them look uncommitted to their teams. That and they take themselves too seriously. Cologne? Are you serious? Jesus. Advertise soup with your mother or something.To say that these guys buy into the Quarterback Mystique is an understatement - there's no smoke and mirrors needed here, no legends and fog machines. You know that P. Diddy commercial where he jetskis in a tuxedo and says, "I am king"? Yeah. "And all the girlies say I'm pretty fly, for a white guy." I don't think I've talked about this before, but I don't buy bad-ass-ery in politics either. People like Rahm Emanuel actually really piss me off, and don't even get me started on Bill Clinton. I don't think all that brouhaha makes you a good leader - no more than landing on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit made Bush a good president - how can it, when all you care about is yourself, the way you look in the mirror or on SportsCenter, and your
"NO MORE HEISMAN!"
But not all quarterbacks are dicks. The quarterbacks that don't salivate over cameras and who put their team first are actually okay guys. And often, they're the ones that get the most abuse. Sadly, it is rare that this abuse strikes dick-quarterbacks, because people seem to be instinctively lulled into submission by dick behavior, and of course, nobody touches the Golden Boys. And to be fair, a lot of people treat quarterbacks like total shit - defensive tackles and ends make careers out of breaking quarterbacks as hard as humanly possible, fans of opposing teams zero in on them as Public Enemy #1, and their own fans blame them for essentially everything.
I once wrote revised lyrics to "The Last Supper" from Jesus Christ Superstar while watching some poor quarterback get repeatedly sacked because his offensive line was incompetent. It was an ode to the quarterback, and it went something along the lines of, "Look at all my non-existent linemen/ sinking in a gentle pool of slime" and "don't disturb me now, I can see a receiver". And of course, "Always hoped that I'd be a quarterback/ knew that I would make it if I tried." Although what I mainly shout when my team's offense on the field is "Go!", I can also be heard screaming, "Protect him!" to the offensive line.
It's one thing to cheer when your team makes a defensive stop and it's another to single out one player on the opposing team to taunt. Especially if said player is not a dick-quarterback, but just a good, highly-touted quarterback. I have major problems with the Colorado Buffaloes football program and its faithful - Gary Barnett has to be one of the least disciplined coaches ever - but high on my list of Colorado fans' offenses is them chanting, "No more Heisman!" to Nebraska's Eric Crouch after the Buffaloes beat the Huskers the year Crouch was in the running for the Heisman. What the fuck? I mean, what the fuck. These are college kids! I don't even like Ole Miss fans chanting "Overrated!" to the entire Texas Tech team, but an entire stadium taunting one specific player on the opposing team who did nothing unseemly except try to win the game? In college, that's grotesque. And of course that one specific player is always going to be the quarterback... a side effect, again, of Ye Olde Quarterback Mystique. Colorado fans proved themselves even classier when they shone laser-pointers in the Oklahoma State quarterback's eye in 2008. Once again: what the fuck.
What truly sucks, however, is to be torn apart by your own team. Nate Longshore, a quarterback for the California (Berkeley) Bears, would be a Golden Boy - he's got the religious trappings and blonde hair and everything - except he's not that great, California's still a struggling school, and their fans are downright cruel. I only saw one Cal game this season - a very messy bowl victory over Miami - and almost every play by Longshore was booed by his own crowd. This isn't so atypical in the pros, but in college this type of backstabbing is way out of line. They aren't playing for money, they're playing for fun and they're playing for you - and they are not professionals. Part of what's going to ruin college football is pro-creep, I swear - the expectation of statistical perfection and refrigerator-sized linemen - when in reality these players are student athletes. Apparently a different quarterback was waiting in the wings behind Longshore. But that's no excuse to boo your quarterback when he makes an incomplete pass. If you have to boo, at least boo the grown-up coaches who are getting paid millions of dollars. Please don't boo the players. And for the love of God, do not play a team song when someone is injured on the field. Please. Christ. Besides which, scorned quarterbacks can prove dangerous. As Harrison Beck proves, they can also prove utterly useless, so I should qualify: good scorned quarterbacks can prove dangerous. Chad Pennington got dumped by the New York Jets in favor of Brett Favre, after enduring a nasty season filled with such niceties as being booed off the field (the season prior to this he was pretty much responsible for every win the Jets had) and hearing fans cheer when he got injured. Why am I a long-distance Jets fan? I don't know - I guess I just can't root for the Giants, but believe me, I never applaud injuries. Now that I'm leaving New York I may just end up following around Pennington, the Mannings, and cheering for the Eagles. Pennington's justifiably got nothing but bitterness for his former team. I have a soft spot for the guy, who never really talked much, and I'm happy to say he's playing great for the Miami Dolphins this year. Something about Comeback Player of the Year. They're going to the playoffs. The Jets and Favre are not, thanks personally to a defeat handed to them by Pennington's Dolphins. "What goes around comes around," says Garth Woolsey of the Toronto Star. "Revenge, thy name is Chad."Former Johnny Football Hero Brett Favre hasn't had the best experience with the Jets either. Not only are fans disappointed with his performance (which, admittedly, has been bad relative to Brett Favre: Football Hero), but his own runningbacks are starting to diss his performance. The coach that wanted him's been fired and as we all know, the only person who gets as much friendly fire as the coach is the quarterback. Commentators don't care about his injured shoulder and dismiss his post-season mulling about retiring as empty talk. Of course, the runningbacks have a right to be frustrated with three interceptions per game, and Brett Favre has mulled retirement more than once (I would hardly classify the guy as a dick quarterback, though). Brett Favre is supposed to be their leader, not their moaner-giver-upper. And that's why, despite the intensity of the abuse that many quarterbacks have to endure, the quarterback has to take his lumps and swim upriver anyway. It's just how the game's set up.Crouch won his Heisman after all. It can be done.
"WHAT DOES JOE GANZ DO NOW?" "JOE GANZ TAKES SOME ADVIL."
A final note: I tend to judge quarterbacks based on values I picked up watching Nebraska football, so I think it's fair to explain what these values are.
Nebraska's last nationally-prominent quarterback was Eric Crouch in 2001 - unsurprisingly, Crouch was playing when the Nebraska football program was nationally-prominent as well. I was a little bit in love with him when he played here - in all fairness to me, I was in middle school. He was a great runner, a good receiver, and an okay passer - but that's okay, it is Nebraska. He had his oh-so-intense picture on the cover of Sports Illustrated and did win that Heisman trophy (though he succumbed to the Heisman curse in the National Championship game). Like many quarterbacks at top 10 schools, Crouch totally bought into his own Quarterback Mystique. He was in love with the position. Post-Nebraska, he made a complete fool of himself bouncing from the NFL to Germany to Canada, searching for a way to play quarterback even after people had repeatedly told him that he was better off at a different position - Crouch wanted to be Johnny Football Hero and thought the only way to achieve greatness was to play quarterback. While I don't doubt Crouch is fond of Nebraska (and indeed, he's been coming back here more since realizing he peaked in college), it became obvious after he graduated that he wasn't really the kind of player that put the team first, and was not really the perfect Nebraska quarterback. Which brings me to my current favorite quarterback, Nebraska's own Joe Ganz. Joey Ganz as some still call him. Ganz is, to put it simply, everything I want in a quarterback. He is, first off, perfect for Nebraska: a good runner, a tough player, and a solid, humble leader that plays the hell out of games despite crazy adversity. You know Nebraska: where the boys are the squarest, the play isn't pretty, and we expect to win by "powering through" (oh boy). That he can pass is just bonus. Personally, I'm also a huge fan of his constant healthy sarcasm and obvious maturity. I have literally never encountered a football player as sarcastic as this guy (sports writers call it "coolness" because they don't know what it is). Oh yeah, and I happen to think he's cute. What can I say, I grew out of my pretty boy stage. He gets an extra picture because he deserves it.Joe Ganz was pretty much fucked over by Bill Callahan. He spent 2006 as No. 2 and then got by-passed again in 2007 - this time in favor of Sam Keller, a flashy transfer who according to the UNL underground had family connections to Callahan. Ganz became "the quarterback that could have been, but wasn't." Keller got the love; Keller got the playing time. Did Keller play well? Eh. When Ganz finally got the chance to play (season-ending injury for Keller), he was stunning. Ganz started in 2008 with one year left in eligibility, and has broken I don't want to know how many all-time Nebraska records in this one wonderful year. He was also fucked over by timing, because although he's statistically excellent he's playing in the same conference as the Big 12 powerhouse quarterbacks, McCoy, Bradford, and Harrell - so he gets ignored by the national media. Not to mention, Nebraska's a struggling school this year, making Ganz a sleeper. In football terms, one of his years was essentially wasted here. Most fans have gotten behind Ganz and are sorry he had to have so much playing opportunity flushed down the toilet, but when I hear from the few that haven't (like "stay down joey, we need a better qb" - that shit, which is not too far from the Jets fans cheering Chad Pennington getting injured, makes me physically ill), I seriously think that if I was Ganz, I might just turn around and give the haters the big Fuck You.
Instead Ganz gets up every fall-semester Saturday (and the occasional Friday and Thursday) and plays his ass off. He doesn't quit. Shit happens and he doesn't quit, because well, that's the thing about shit - it happens. S.S.D.D., to quote another great group of friends in Stephen King's Dreamcatcher. Then he gets up, he adjusts, and he tries again. Hell, even if he fumbles the ball and the other team starts running it back for a touchdown, he will go and tackle that returner personally. Yes, here at Nebraska, quarterbacks are expected to tackle, too. He never gives up - he never wilts, as current head coach Bo Pelini says. And the team takes their cue from him. He cares about being a role model for younger players, gives credit where it's due, and takes every opportunity to praise his teammates and his coaches. Surprise, the team plays well under Ganz's leadership. The coaches know they can rely on him in the huddle - it's like having that older kid looking after the young ones, you know, one less thing to worry about. Of course, Ganz can also play good football. He's a talented guy who knows his shit and completes huge plays when they're most needed (like on 3rd-and-10). We would not - and I can't stress this enough - the Huskers would not have nine wins this season without him. He took us from a depressed and mopey 5-7 team in 2007 to an energetic and jacked-up 9-4 team in 2008. Skill is a vital part of this. But so is tenacity. And that is something that some of those other quarterbacks - Colt McCoy, Tim Tebow - just don't have. How could they? They're on top 10 teams and have ridden the coattails of their 5-star teammates and their own popularity. With all due respect to those guys, they haven't had to bounce back from anything. So go ahead and dance, Mark Sanchez. Go conduct your orchestra. Tell me about your trials and tribulations. Have none? Oh, okay.Nebraska quarterbacks are supposed to be able to take their licks, so they don't do pansy moves like running out of bounds or sliding baseball-style across the first down mark to avoid getting tackled. They just get tackled (or sometimes they get their heads twisted around exorcist-style). Ganz has taken his share of monster hits too. In the fourth quarter of the Gator Bowl - after a successful high-pressure completed pass - he was tackled and pushed to the ground face-first. Then he just lay there - took off his own helmet and lay there (see below, with concerned runningback Marlon Lucky). And Joe Ganz, let me tell you, never just lies there. He's said that he would have to be "peeled off the field." He'd already started limping in the first half and now, what? Concussion, apparently. He was helped off the field and his back-up immediately fumbled the ball - I went to take a walk to cool my nerves. I prayed for a win but I also prayed for Joe Ganz to be okay. He was back on the next offensive series. He got them all the way to the final field goal. "There was no doubt in my mind," says Coach Pelini, that Ganz would be back after that hit. Just a mild concussion, after all. He went on to win the game MVP, a trophy he wants to cut up and split with the defense. But you know why he won that MVP, despite two turnovers? Because he's the quarterback. Because he's a great quarterback who fulfilled his responsibilities to a team that needed him: leading them to victory, not just by the plays he made but by his emotional core, by what many sports writers covering the game have called his guts. That's why it's more than plays and stats and X's and O's - that's why it matters whether the quarterback is a dick or not. It matters how he treats his teammates. It matters if he makes excuses. When the team is not some monstrous powerhouse well-oiled machine - when the team has had to struggle - the heart of the team is the quarterback. So it's on the quarterback to get them to that win, even if the other players are the ones actually running into the end zone. It's a hard task, but if he succeeds, to the quarterback go the spoils. Asked what was next for him after the game - hinting at NFL plans - he said, "Joe Ganz takes some Advil."
Okay, I should stop. I could go on and on about Joe Ganz. I'm going to seriously miss him next year. I hope he comes back to Nebraska somehow - grad assistant, perhaps? - because he's the kind of quarterback you would want young players to take after. He wants to be remembered "as someone who shut up, worked hard, never complained and left everything that I had on that field." And there you have it. I couldn't ask for anything more.
The Nebraska Quarterback: Joe Ganz
My conclusion about the Quarterback Mystique is that the best quarterbacks are the ones that don't buy into it; or rather, the quarterbacks who recognize their responsibilities to the team but don't obsess over the benefits. The ones who don't think they're any better than anybody else on the team (or the coaching staff), even if their burden is bigger. They put the team first. And not that the quarterback should be blamed for having a lucky season and outstanding teammates, but the quarterback that has to get through rough patches and dry spells is the one that actually proves himself. Arguably, the best politicians do the same. Those are the only "leaders" that I consider real leaders.
And God, I wish this were obvious to everyone.
