The Best NFL Quarterback: Rodgers
Friday - February 16, 2011
| Share
Del.icio.usWith the Green Bay Packers crowned Super Bowl champions, one issue seems settled beyond reasonable doubt. MVP Aaron Rodgers is a fully vested member of the elite quarterback club. His playoff run was remarkable. Leading a team that saw 16 players placed on injured reserve during the season, he wound up as only the third QB in Super Bowl history to throw for more than 360 yards and three touchdowns. He now joins Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers and Big Ben Roethlisberger in that exclusive company.
* So who would you choose to build a team around if you had those options? Many would select either Manning or Brady. Both are long-proven entities with impressive resumes. Manning is the best reader of defenses in the league, and Brady may be the most composed signal-caller under pressure, but I’ll take Rodgers. He is the best athlete in the group, and nobody has a stronger or more accurate arm. His feet are nimble, especially in small spaces, and he is an excellent decision-maker.
But the deciding factor is his youth. He’s the youngest of the six, and relatively lightly played, having been a starter for only three seasons. He could easily play at the highest level for another 10 years.
And with Green Bay being the second-youngest team in the league, many of his teammates should be around with him.
It’s hard to imagine that, barring injury (he did suffer two concussions this year), Rodgers and the Packers won’t be in the conversation as one of the exceptional teams for the next several years.
* While people have taken to complaining about attendance at UH football games, NCAA attendance figures show UH to be top in the Western Athletic Conference, with 37,325 tickets distributed - well ahead of Fresno State and Boise State, which again begs the question of why it took so long for Hawaii to get an invitation to the MWC. If current figures hold, UH will be second in that conference in 2012, trailing only the Air Force Academy. Distance is the obvious answer, but it’s not like the Warriors will show up empty-handed when they join the MWC. Hawaii’s gate is very much affected by the team’s performance. Not so at national leader Michigan, which despite a 7-6 team, still drew 111,825 fans per game.
* Stories out of Dallas during Super Bowl week showed everything is bigger in Texas. The Packers practiced at Highland Park High School, which had amazing facilities. While it is well-known that Texas schoolboy football is huge, you may not have known that the Texas 5A state title game had a higher announced attendance than 16 of the 35 college bowl games.
* There’s more reason than ever to get your UH baseball tickets online and print them at home to avoid long lines at the stadium. UH has worked out an agreement with online ticketing partner Paciolan to drop the fee for any ticket costing $10 or less to $1 from $3. Coupled with the $1 charge to print at home, the total cost per ticket is reduced from $4 to $2.
The season opener is Friday against nationally ranked Oregon.
E-mail this story | Print this page | Comments (0) | Archive | RSS Comments (0) |
Most Recent Comment(s):
