On Quarterback Leadership

I expect nothing less from you, btw.

Funny that others on the Longhorn interweb have used it to say he still obviously doesn’t get “it”.

for “tautology”.

Very interesting read. Made me think of all the bullshit descriptions of leadership in business and in interviews.

One of the things I find most maddening about sports commentary is how we can pretty much rationalize everything after the fact. Not only that, but we can turn on a dime and see the narrative completely reverse directions to do it. See the Manning brothers, LeBron James, Roy Williams, Mack Brown, etc.

Nowhere is this foolishness more apparent than when it comes to discussing leadership in sports. This is clearly an area where we need to all stop talking out of our ass. As Scipio rightly points out, it is hard to lead if you can’t play — and there may not be much more to it than that. Seriously, all of this shit gets easy when you are winning and playing well. Anyone can look like a leader then. It isn’t an accident that the leaders of a team are usually the best players.

This is not to deny the existence of leadership. I think it is probably real. But I also think that we as outsiders have zero chance of figuring out how much it matters within a given team. We focus on results, so we assign winning teams as having good leadership and losing teams as having bad leadership. Wouldn’t it be easer to assume that winning teams simply had better players and coaches?

People don’t want to see you talk, they want to see you work.

He was a “legacy” as his dad, Charlie was a QB in the early 50’s at UT.

Robert saw mop up duty behind Rick McIvor and Rob Moerschell. Texas started the season 4-0 and went into Arkansas ranked #1 after thumping OU 34-14. It was a disaster from start to finish with Arkansas brutally dropping Texas 42-11. Brewer hit a former QB, Donnie Little for the only Texas score with less than a minute to go.

On the plane back, Brewer talked about giving up football to concentrate on studies. He decided being a part of the team was too important. Three weeks later, trailing Houston 14-0 at halftime in the Dome, Coach Akers inserts Brewer. He leads the team on three scoring drives and a 14-14 tie.

Two months later he is the MVP of the Cotton Bowl as #5 Texas stuns Bear Bryant and #3 Alabama 14-12.

The next year Brewer took over a very young Texas offense and is the only QB Fred Akers ever truly trusted to control a game from the huddle. That 1982 team suffered a freakish last minute loss to SMU, but Brewer’s calm, confident demeanor kept the players on task and they finished the regular season with six straights wins (including victories over Arkansas and A&M) averaging 39 points a game.

Brewer was nothing special in High School, and didn’t stand out at Texas until he got on the field, and the players recognized what he had.

Brewer said that when he was thinking about leaving the team he talked to his good friend, Herkie Walls. Walls, a 5-8 wide receiver with Olympic speed, told Robert:

"Brew baby, you’ve got to stick around, �cause the cream always rises to the top."

To paraphrase a Supreme Court Justice, players may not be able to define leadership, but they know it when they see it.

And the same thing goes for head coaches. If Mack Brown doesn’t win, it’s because he’s too folksy . . . If Mark Richt doesn’t win at Georgia, it’s because he’s too stoic. . . .

Will Muschamp, on the other hand, was perceived as a can’t miss because he’s rough and tough and full of stuff. And Muschamp may well win. (I hope he does.) But a person’s style is ultimately evaluated on how successful he is.
You hit the nail on the head.

Look for the companion piece on Romo in a couple days’ time.

Really like the way Ash is handling “the competition”, which about as frivolous as the Seinfeld episode. Sure looks like Mack;s head games arent affecting this kid one bit.

A developing theme I see is Case hanging with these guys in workouts and outside of football. Where is Ash? I never see his named mentioned. Is he an outcast and that’s his barrier?