Email This StorySports take: NFL quarterbacks' success not tethered to alma mater's status
Nov. 10, 2009
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McClatchy NewsPhillip Rivers (No. 17) escapes Ohio State defensive end Will Smith during a game in 2003. Pro quarterbacks like Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger and Brett Favre have defied the norm of successful quarterbacks coming from prominent college programs. |
By Matt Larsen
Reporter
The Swamp, the Horseshoe, Death Valley, the Coliseum -- these famed college football stadiums have been a home quarterback's childhood dream and an opposing quarterback's worst nightmare for decades.
Whether it's the appeal of calling these historic venues your home or the fear of braving them as a visiting quarterback, the University of Florida, Ohio State University, Louisiana State University and Southern California University have attracted some of the nation's top high school recruits at the quarterback position through the years.
However, it's not just the lights, fans and grandstands that bring young signal-callers to high-profile programs like Florida and Ohio State. History, prestige, coaching and location all play a part as well as another factor for athletes with the biggest dreams: their ability to prepare them for the NFL.
Of course they sign on with every intent of bringing home BCS bowl game victories and Heisman trophies, but when you get down to what runs right alongside fame in the hearts of so many aspiring athletes, it's money. And that money gleams down at them from the peak that is NFL football.
In order to reach that peak, high school recruits know they must look for programs that will provide them an opportunity to shine. College coaches know this too, and pitch their programs accordingly.
As high school quarterbacks tour their campuses, Jim Tressel, Urban Meyer, Les Miles and Pete Carroll don't fail to mention the spotlight that awaits these youngsters if they choose play for them.
It's not simply the coaches either. Media, fans and even common sense tell high school stars that their chances of making it big in the NFL rise as the prestige of their college rises. Naturally, this trend would make sense as more prestige leads to more exposure to NFL scouts.
While this trend may have some validity, so does the trend of successful quarterbacks in the NFL who were not products of big-time programs.
Take a look at the current top ten rated signal-callers in the NFL.
Nine of the nation's current top-10 NFL quarterbacks come from college programs that haven't made a BCS game appearance in almost a decade. The University of Michigan is the only school with a top-10 rated NFL quarterback (Tom Brady) that has played in a BCS game in the last eight years. One must go back to Purdue University's trip to the Rose Bowl in the 2000 season to find a second. It could also be noted that Purdue, despite its lack of dominance the past few years, claims two of the nation's top-10 quarterbacks in Drew Brees and Kyle Orton.
Schools with even less national publicity like the University of Southern Mississippi (Brett Favre), the University of Miami-Ohio (Ben Roethlisberger) and the University of Eastern Illinois (Tony Romo) produced the nation's second-, fifth- and eighth-ranked quarterbacks respectively.
True, one does not need to be in the top-10 quarterbacks to be successful. However, extending this look to include the top-20 rated quarterbacks in the NFL only adds to the argument that big college programs don't necessarily lead to NFL careers.
USC does make it on the list of schools with Carson Palmer ranked 14th, but so do schools like the University of Delaware (Joe Flacco), North Carolina State University (Philip Rivers), Northern Iowa University (Kurt Warner), Vanderbilt University (Jay Cutler) and Iowa State University (Seneca Wallace).
Sorry Pete Carroll and Jim Tressell, you can pitch all you want, but in the end you can't argue with the shear number of athletes that start under center every Sunday that did not start under the Saturday-night lights of storied football programs.
The numbers simply show that aspiring NFL quarterbacks don't need the spotlight of a "big-time" college program to earn the spotlight of the NFL.
Matt Larsen is a sophomore journalism major from Katy.
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