The Best of Frank Deford by Frank Deford

Author:Frank Deford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Triumph Books
Published: 2013-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Field General

The quarterback. Signal caller. Field general. I like that the best: field general. There’s absolutely nothing else like a quarterback in team sports. Oh, to be sure, there are goalies in hockey or soccer, or pitchers, taking turns every fifth day or closing for a single inning most days—but nobody else is close in influence to the quarterback. There he is: beginning every play, vital to most, utterly in charge. Not even Shakespeare ever wrote a hero so vital to his drama as a quarterback is to his game.

The quarterback, the quarterback—he’s our man. If he can’t do it, no one can!

In a very real way, in fact, the quarterback is a flaw in football, for while the sport requires entirely too many bodies for one man to achieve victory by himself, the one good man at quarterback is virtually required for victory.

So every Sunday we must hold our breath, praying, in the vernacular, that our quarterback will not “go down.” Montana goes down, and there goes the 49ers’ season. Cunningham goes down and cross off the Eagles. One man down, good-bye to a team.

In fact, now the back-up quarterback has become a vital part of every team—even if he just stands on the sideline with a clipboard. Back-up quarterbacks make much more money than the starters at many other positions. They’re sort of the mistresses of sport—kept men. On the other hand, if politicians cared as much about vice presidents as coaches do about back-up quarterbacks, this would have always been a far, far better place. Would you choose a pigskin Dan Quayle to back up your quarterback?

Protecting quarterbacks is a dilemma. He backs up, a stationery target—dead meat if the pocket breaks and he’s standing there, naked, arm cocked, or, hardly better, scrambling desperately to escape three-hundred-pounders charging at him.

On the other hand, how do you protect the quarterback with too much favor without making a double standard of what football is—a basic, primeval exercise in which “liking to hit” is the supreme compliment?

It’s time somebody came up with an answer. After all, the quarterback as we know him is fifty years old now. Before him was the single-wing tailback, who was more versatile. The tailback ran as well as passed, and sometimes he kicked, too. But for all that, the tailback was not as integral to the team. He did not call the plays. A blocking back did that. Responsibility was more divided. The tailback was a leading man, but he did not necessarily lead. The quarterback is the power and the glory, the brains and the charisma.

Also, of course, it matters that in the NFL, where almost three-quarters of the players are black, most quarterbacks are still white. Maybe this is prejudice. Maybe just because white men can’t jump, it doesn’t mean they can’t throw. Anyway, it is a fact—race—which means that quarterbacks matter more at the box office, just as they do on the field. Of course, quarterbacks do not tend to be as romantic as they used to be.

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