February 3rd, 2009
Some fantastic stuff from Sailer about the creation of the quarterback caste:
I was going to mention that a cool thing about 2-time Super Bowl winning quarterback Ben Roethlisberger (besides his being Swiss-American) is that his sports upbringing seemed more old fashioned Jack Armstrong-like go-outside-and-play than that of so many of the new robo-quarterbacks who are raised by their fathers from the cradle to be NFL quarterbacks. The Sideline Dad has become as ubiquitous as the Stage Mom.
For example, Notre Dame’s quarterback Jimmy Clausen was held back two years by his parents so that as a high school senior at expensive Oaks Christian in Ventura County, he was a 19-year-old man playing against 17-year-old boys, making him the top-rated high school QB in the country. He also had two older brothers who had started at QB in the SEC, and had a former NFL QB as his private quarterback tutor since he was 10.
Quarterback is turning into something of a caste. Now the quarterback at Clausen’s old high school, Oaks Christian, is Nick Montana, whose dad is some guy named Joe. But don’t worry, there’s still hope for boys whose dads aren’t NFL Hall-of-Fame QBs. It’s said that the Oaks Christian second string QB next season will likely be Trevor Gretzky, the son of an immigrant.
Anyway, Roethlisberger was this enormous kid (he’s now 6′-5″ and 241 pounds) with fantastic coordination who played three sports in high school. Basketball was his strongest emphasis in high school, then baseball (where he played shortstop), and then, finally, football.
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