|
| News | Sports |
Business | Opinions |
Columns | Entertainment |
| Science/Technology| Weather | Archives | E-mail Us |
Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, November 15, 1999
Let us now rally to the defense of quarterbacks
One of the reasons it's good to be an American is the fact that we - each and every one of us - are guaranteed the right to hold forth on topics about which we know little or nothing.
In other climes, people may look at you askance should your comments on a given subject make it agonizingly clear that you are utterly clueless. But not here. Not in America, The Land of the Talking Heads.
That is why I have no qualms about sharing with you my thoughts on professional football.
Never played the game (obviously). Never studied its intricacies. Never learned anything about its strategies, save for Darrell Royal's dictum about passing the ball (there are three things that can happen when you do that, and only two of them are good).
Wait. It gets worse. Though it pains me to admit it, I seldom watch a televised game, college or pro, all the way through - although I did stick with that Super Bowl a couple of years back when the Denver Broncos laid the mighty Green Bay Packers low. Now, that was a game. As for the rest . . .
I am,, however, just familiar enough with pro football to be dangerous, if only to myself. Therefore, I humbly nominate myself to toss out an issue that deserves a little more attention than it's gotten:
Has anybody noticed that NFL quarterbacks have become a seriously endangered species?
I mean, come on. Look around the league. Two Hall of Fame shoo-ins, the Cowboys' Troy Aikman and the Forty-Niners' Steve Young, have sustained so many concussions that there's reason to question whether they can, or should, continue playing the game. Another great, the Dolphins' Dan Marino, is out with less serious but still worrisome injuries. Vinnie Testaverde, the guy who was supposed to propel the Jets into the Super Bowl, is out for the season after a close encounter of the bone-crushing kind. The list goes on and on . . .
Who's to blame, you ask? I'll tell you: physics.
That's right: the laws of physics.
Permit me to explain. Even if you are as unversed in the lore of football as I am, you will have noticed that one of the key elements in the game is for several defensive players to harry the quarterback unmercifully and do their level best to pound him into the ground like a tent peg.
It has ever been thus. Over the years, however, one crucial thing has changed dramatically: The guys chasing the quarterback have gotten bigger. A lot bigger. It is not uncommon for these guys to weigh in these days at 300, 325 or even 350 pounds.
Now if they were great lumbering, unwieldy hulks, it wouldn't be that big a deal, because more often and not they'd never come close to nailing the QB. Ah, but the new breed is quick as well as huge. With increasing regularity, they are getting their man. And they are doing severe damage to him.
So: What to do? Granted, it's deeply satisfying on a certain level to see another human being turned into a junk sculpture. As the play-by-play guys are fond of telling us, this is a physical game. (Note: Anybody out there ever witnessed an ethereal football game? Please advise.)
However, you do need to have a live, functioning quarterback out there, like it or not. What are our options?
Change the rules? Might help for a while, but we don't want to sissify the game, do we?
How about high technology? We could devise exoskeleton rigs that QBs could put on like a suit in order to acquire the superhuman quickness, strength and agility they so desperately need to counter the threat.
Then there's always genetics: We could assemble a team of Nobel Prize laureates to preside over the development of a new breed of 350-pound quarterbacks who can run like the wind and launch passes that whiz through the ether like a Nolan Ryan fireball.
That, however, would be inordinately time-consuming; and in any case there are certain bio-ethical issues hovering over this strategy that would give pause even to the most rabid Joe Sweatsox.
So: Are we stuck? Not at all. I have the answer: That's why they pay me the big bucks.
Here's the plan: We boost the number of players permitted on the field from 11 to 15. (Stay with me, now.) And we assign to those newly created slots four personal injury attorneys who will constitute an impenetrable line of defense around their endangered client. You think that won't strike sheer terror into the heart of a charging lineman? Think again. Armani suits and tasseled Gucci loafers trump sweaty jerseys and tight pants every time.
Brooks Peterson
| Talk about this column | Other Columns
| Home |
© 1999 Caller-Times Publishing Company Corpus Christi Caller Times, a
Scripps Howard newspaper.
All rights reserved.
|
 |
 |
|
