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The other day, some of us at gatorsfirst.com got to talking about the NFL- and I mentioned how many current NFL starting QBs are from the SEC.
Now, I abhor using NFL performance to argue the greatness of individual college teams and/or players. For instance, I take ’95 Nebraska as the greatest college team of all time, while many take ’01 Miami based on the NFL talent on the roster. So I’m not trying to make the conference argument for the SEC based on this data. In fact, if you think I have to make the argument for the SEC at all, I guffaw in your direction. The SEC is #1. That’s a separate debate, that's not really debatable.
Let’s get back to looking at the curious case of the NFL QB.
I have been thinking a lot lately about how the NFL uses QBs. Maybe it’s because of the great Tim Tebow debate. (Editor’s Note: Gators First has attacked the Tebow Pro question several different ways: here, here, here, and here, to pick a few.)
My main beef with the NFL and its use (abuse?) of QBs can be illustrated like this: in any given year, assume there are 30 draft-eligible QBs coming out of the college ranks (it’s well-known that a large percentage of NFL starters- and stars- at this position come from outside of the big schools, so 30 is a fair number). Over a 15-year period, that’s 450 QBs (yes, there are QBs that play that long) vying for 32 jobs. So why, over the last 15 years, have we seen probably only 20 good QBs in the NFL? Undoubtedly, what is asked, physically and mentally, of the NFL QB is a difficult task. But, to me, if there are only so few people on the planet who can perform such a task, it is time for someone to ask their QBs to perform a slightly different task.
So, with QBs on the brain, I thought “Wow, there’s all of a sudden a lot of SEC guys starting at QB in the NFL, I wonder how that compares with other conferences?” I expected the “non-BCS” crowd to win in a landslide, with Big Ben, Tony Romo, Brett Favre, etc.
Here is my counting of starting NFL QBs. This was done according to school's conference affiliation when player joined the college team (that is, when they were a recruit deciding where to play to lead them to an NFL career). Note Hasselbeck and Ryan are from BC, and Ryan finished his career in the ACC. You could add Ryan to the ACC column and it wouldn’t drastically change these numbers.
SEC (6): Manning, Manning, Stafford, Russell, Campbell, Cutler
BE (4): Bulger, McNabb, Hasselbeck, Ryan
P10 (5): Sanchez, Palmer, Cassell, Rodgers, Edwards
B10 (4): Brady, Collins, Orton, Brees
ACC (3): Hill, Schaub, Rivers
B12 (0): Fail.
Other (10): Favre, Warner, Pennington, Leftwich, Quinn, Garrard,
Flacco, Ben R, Romo, Delhomme
As percentages: Other (31.25%), SEC (18.75%), Pac-10 (15.63%), Big
East (12.5%), Big Ten (12.5%), ACC (9.38%), Big XII (0%).
First thought: wow, with all the recent talk about Big XII QBs, they sure don’t have the NFL track record right now. Second thought: my intuition was right about the SEC leading, but it’s closer than I would have thought.
Then, I got to thinking that the “starter” moniker was sort of misleading, as there have been injuries and general suckiness that have led to some teams playing multiple QBs so far this year.
This next list consists of backups who have seen action, have started, or are expected to start week 4:
SEC (1): Croyle
P10 (2): Boller, Anderson
B10 (1): Henne
B12 (1): Wallace
Other (2): Kolb, Johnson
Including these in the percentages from above (39 total &NFL QBs& to date)...
Other (30.77%), SEC (17.95%), Pac-10 (17.95%), Big Ten (12.82%), Big
East (10.26%), ACC (7.69%), Big XII (2.56%).
So the Big XII finally got on the board, and the Pac-10 pulls even with the SEC as the single conference with the highest number of “NFL QBs”.
I assume you could extend this and take all QBs who have made an active roster for an NFL team, or some other criteria. I think the playing time is a better argument than being on a roster, as I’m sure a lot of guys land on NFL rosters as “projects”, because some coach thinks he can take a guy with outstanding physical attributes and teach him to become an NFL QB. Which is probably a reason for so many NFL washouts.
Could someone possibly take the “big winners” from college, or the QBs with non-traditional skill sets, and build a more consistent NFL winner? Because the current NFL system seems to just burn through guys’ careers, hoping to find that one franchise QB to build sustained success around. If somehow that emphasis on the QB was reduced, schematically or otherwise, could an NFL team build itself around a more creative model and succeed?
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