Quarterback Obie

I've been trying to figure out what rubs me wrong with Obie. It finally hit me this morn driving in the car listening to Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl on Bill Bennett's radio show.

Kyl said that Obie is a dangerous mix of someone who is naive and someone who is conceited. The danger is that if he knows all, if he's smarter than everyone else, he'll do dumb things.

It hit me then: Obie's a quarterback. A pretty boy. A movie star. The chosen one, the darling. Paul Hornung, Frank Gifford, and Joe Theisman "it-rhymes-with-Heisman", all rolled into one.

It may have been Deacon Jones who was the first to say he never met a quarterback he ever liked. (I always thought it was Sam Huff who coined that phrase.) As a nose guard/center in my few years of playing little league football, there was never a quarterback that I really liked very much, either.

They all had this air about them that they were special. Better, smarter, more important than the rest of us. Chosen. Maybe it was because at that level the best athlete was so regularly picked to be QB. Maybe it was because the coach spent so much extra time with the QB. Who knows?

But Obie has that same quality. The beautiful wife, the Ivy League education, the adoring crowds. The fainting. Like he can do no wrong. Like his poop don't stink. He didn't go off to make money (tho he certainly has), he went to be a "community organizer".

Well, whoopty-do.

Admit it, doesn't a part of you just want to pluck him on the ear for being so perfect? Don't you want to plant his face mask in the turf the second he releases the ball?