http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nfl--sorry-socal-story--abysmal-run-of-qbs-from-region-has-nfl-personnel-searching-for-answers

As news spread over the weekend that USC quarterback Matt Barkley would not throw at the NFL scouting combine this week, two NFL personnel men had a similar, withering reaction.


"Here we go again, another L.A. movie star quarterback who needs his own day to throw," a veteran scout said, the sarcasm splashing from his mouth like a wave hitting a seawall.

"And you wonder why guys from Southern California ?" a veteran team executive said, referring as much to the region as to Barkley's alma mater. "Everything is like they have to draw attention to themselves."

When it was pointed out to the executive that Barkley supposedly hasn't been cleared to throw by doctors, the anger only seemed to grow, not subside.

"I'm telling you, it's always with guys from down there… not just USC, the whole area. I don't know what it is."



Whatever it is, the concern about quarterbacks who have come out of everywhere from Santa Barbara to San Diego is nearly 30 years of failure at the NFL level. This year will mark 30 years since John Elway, a graduate of Granada Hills High in the San Fernando Valley, was drafted No. 1 overall.

Since Elway (and even fellow Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon of Hamilton High in Los Angeles before him), the quarterbacks from that region have been little more than a series of flops. While Carson Palmer, Alex Smith and Randall Cunningham have had solid careers in the pros, they are the best of an otherwise sad group.

Overall, 21 quarterbacks who grew up in Southern California have been drafted in the first four rounds of the NFL draft dating to 1984.

That's out of a total of 178 quarterbacks selected in either the regular draft or the supplemental draft during that time. In other words, SoCal quarterbacks represent nearly 12 percent of the quarterbacks selected in that time. Moreover, of the 67 quarterbacks selected in the first round since 1984, nine (13 percent) are SoCal boys.

Not one of the 21 has so much as led his team to a Super Bowl. Even worse, the failures have been staggering, including the likes of Matt Leinart, Kyle Boller, J.P. Losman, Akili Smith, Dan McGwire and show-stopper Todd Marinovich. That list doesn't include Mark Sanchez, who has regressed the past two years with the New York Jets after helping them get to back-to-back AFC Championship games.

"You ask me and it's the decline of the Los Angeles City programs," said Moon, who played at Hamilton in the 1970s. "Between budget cuts and lack of equipment and all the other things, they just can't offer the same kind of quality program that we had back when I was . You have to have development and focus to produce really skill position players like quarterbacks. That doesn't happen. I see it."

Moon sees it because he still helps old friend Paul Knox, who has been the head coach at Dorsey High in the Los Angeles area since 1985. Moon is slightly younger than Knox, who also went to Hamilton, and raises money and gets equipment donations to help with the Dorsey program. To Knox, the lack of success of SoCal quarterbacks is sobering.

"When you think about it that way, it's pretty stunning," Knox said. "We have the seven-on-seven leagues. We have the talent. If you're recruiting from the Pac-12 or the Mountain West, you're still coming here to get players.

"I would say that the talent is dispersed and most of the programs aren't what they were, at least not in . But even out in the suburbs, you get Mater Dei and some of those programs, those are good programs. I really can't explain it."


Others, including NFL personnel, have plenty of theories, particularly when it comes to guys from USC.

"When you start at USC, it's like you've already made the big time," a team executive said. "You're a star. You're in the news all the time. It's like, 'Oh yeah, I'll be in the NFL in a couple of years, don't worry about it.' That's not how you make it in this league."


Knox echoed that sentiment, saying: "USC has been like our NFL team even since the NFL left, especially when Pete Carroll was here. If you're the quarterback there, you've arrived." That sense of entitlement has manifested itself in different ways. With Leinart, there was a sense among people who were with him after he was drafted by Arizona that he was always wanting to be in Los Angeles, not with the Cardinals working on his game.

With Sanchez, his love of the limelight was cemented at USC. Even now with the Jets, Sanchez seems to welcome the attention that goes with dating starlets like Eva Longoria rather than shying away from it.

That said, Leinart and Sanchez are only two cases.

The consistent failure of the overall group is strange. Where quarterbacks from Texas, (Drew Brees, Andy Dalton, Robert Griffin III and Andrew Luck) and even Northern California (Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Colin Kaepernick) have had success, SoCal passers don't come even close.

"If there's one thing I would say, it's that they're not tough, especially from a mental standpoint," a veteran scout said. "Elway was raised by a coach. He was taught the right way. Moon had it tougher than all of them because of the . That guy had to go to Canada to prove us all wrong.

"I don't know what it is about it down there, but I haven't seen one kid from there like that since ... Like I said, movie stars."
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actually i never thought Matt Barkley was that kind of a dude

most of the stuff ive read is about him being the opposite actually

Is a 'sorry Western PA QBs' story not sexy enough?

Southern California high school football is in steep decline because their league leading amount of current signal-callers for the toughest and most competitive position in professional sports doesn't feature a lock Hall of Famer?

And I don't even like Barkley all that much as an NFL prospect but him being pegged as a 'Hollywood QB' seems to pretty much be based on an unnamed crotchety scout seeing that he has blonde hair and Matt Leinart liked to chase hoes.

USC QBs being perennially overrated is one of them....

It'll be fun watching SC crash and burn with another slow statue under center though..

Max Browne, come on down to be the next overrated great white hype signal caller from USC!


edit, I'm surprised he actually stayed committed. Good for Kiffin.



______________________
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OSU fans throwing QB shade is worse than Stanford fans chirping about running backs.

Like the entire history of NFL Buckeye signal-callers, nothing to see here.

It's 9 here which means noon there, about time to go have yourself a nice lunch.

Bon Appetit, Brutus.

>OSU fans throwing QB shade is worse than Stanford fans
>chirping about running backs.

& throwing shade at the program you root for

I think I'm going to have a banh mi for lunch...

______________________
Ghostface Killah - Bulletproof Wallets
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KRNDN - Everythings Nothing

>

and cmon, you know the ugly bay area women people talk about are all white


I'd put our asian, latina, and black women up against any other region

>and cmon, you know the ugly bay area women people talk about
>are all white
>
>
>I'd put our asian, latina, and black women up against any
>other region
>
>
>

>and cmon, you know the ugly bay area women people talk about
>are all white
>
>
>I'd put our asian, latina, and black women up against any
>other region
>
>
>

>I'd put our asian, latina, and black women up against any
>other region

I was there for the first time last month. i must have been hanging out in the wrong hoods

there's no black people in SF

you were in the wrong damn city lol



when people hear "the bay" they only think of SF??

or not a distinction worthy of mentioning when casually recounting my visit to a friend

ie. "I was in SF last week" vs "I was in SF and oakland and carmel and etc etc" last week

disingenuous...

"Matt Leinart, Kyle Boller, J.P. Losman, Akili Smith, Dan McGwire and show-stopper Todd Marinovich..."

I never thought Leinart was that good, I thought he benefitted from playing with a ridiculously talented team. Boller sucked in college and I think he completed less that 50% of his passes, but scouts fell in love because he could throw a ball 60 yards on 1 knee. Losman was one of those out of nowhere workout wonders too. As for a Akili, I don't think any of the dudes that went off to play baseball for a few years then came back to football ever panned out. Dan McGwire got notoriety because of his brother, Marinovich had a fucked up childhood and became a crackhead.

>disingenuous...
>
>"Matt Leinart, Kyle Boller, J.P. Losman, Akili Smith, Dan
>McGwire and show-stopper Todd Marinovich..."
>
>I never thought Leinart was that good, I thought he benefitted
>from playing with a ridiculously talented team. Boller sucked
>in college and I think he completed less that 50% of his
>passes,
Boller was one of many QB fuckups by Brian Billick post-Super Bowl before picking up McNair: Elvis Grbac, Chris Redman, Boller, Anthony Wright.

I don't remember anyone thinking Boller was gonna be any better than Eric Zeier besides Billick.

but scouts fell in love because he could throw a ball
>60 yards on 1 knee. Losman was one of those out of nowhere
>workout wonders too.
Not to mention Losman was playing at damn Tulane, obviously he wasn't pedigreed coming out of HS.

As for a Akili, I don't think any of the
>dudes that went off to play baseball for a few years then came
>back to football ever panned out. Dan McGwire got notoriety
>because of his brother, Marinovich had a fucked up childhood
>and became a crackhead.

He actually started off at UCLA and enrolled early, but transferred after spring practice after he didn't win the starting job and cause he was tired of Corey Paus bullying him around. And we haven't had a half decent QB since then, though Hundley looks like he's breaking that.

EDIT: Now that I think of it, we've actually had three QBs since then that transferred away and later played in the NFL: Losman, Matt Moore, and Macleod Bethel-Thompson. Not that those guys would have made a difference over some horrid Toledo/Dorrell/Neuheisel coaching, but sure as shit beats out Ben Olson and Kevin Craft.

fuckin around, I don't know shit about Losman's high school career.

I don't know why I remember those details since I was around 13 at the time (probably that's when I started paying attention to high school football cause I was about to start it), but UCLA stopped recruiting Boller cause they got Losman early (USC already got Carson Palmer the year before), only to be left empty handed when Losman transferred before ever getting a snap at UCLA. And then neither of them amount to shit as pros, which was my first lesson in learning that recruiting battles that are a BIG DEAL will more than likely not mean anything a few years down the road (other BIG DEAL recruiting battles that turned out to be nothing: Marvin Simmons vs. Kevin Simon vs. Michael Craven, and Lorenzo Booker vs. Hershel Dennis, though I still got love for Hershel).

As a freshman, pre-injury, he looked like he was going to be the next Al Wilson. Then he tore his knee up and was never the same. It's a shame, because he was on his way to stardom.

Anyway UCLA worked out just fine in that battle, cause even though they missed out on those guys, we ended up with Spencer Havner who ended up being All Pac-10 and played a few years in the League, but my real disappointment from that group was Marvin Simmons. Most people know he had a hard time qualifying and couldn't stick at USC and eventually ended up at K-State, but I went to high school with him. There's like 6 or 7 Simmons brothers, all of whom played football at Poly or Compton Dominguez (I think the youngest one JUST graduated) and all of whom look nearly identical, and as it was told to me by one of my friends who played on the team, after Marvin had trouble getting a qualifying SAT after 3 or 4 tries, he actually sent one of his college-aged brothers to take it for him... and his brother couldn't get a qualifying score either! How do you cheat and still not qualify?

And yeah, we've had some bad luck with star players getting hurt. Justin Hunter was another one two seasons ago. We've been kinda cursed with that. Even in basketball when Chris Lofton got cancer his senior year several years ago and Jeronne Maymon tearing up his knee before this season.

It also brings up guys like Marinovich and Dan McGwire who haven't played in 20 years as negatives, in which case we might as well start marking down David Carr as a negative against Nor Cal and Jim Druckenmiller as a negative against Western PA.

The only thing that So Cal has done wrong are that guys like Carson Palmer and Randall Cunningham topped out at good but not HOF careers, which I don't think you can blame on the LADWP or So Cal smog at that point. And the only real story here is that USC QBs in the Carroll/Kiffin era have been terrible pros with the exception of Palmer, and that UCLA hasn't put a QB in the pros in over a decade.

Carson and Alex are not successes at all. They are examples of dat priviledge. Carson has lived off one playoff appearance for years. HE FUCKING SUCKS. The 9ers let Alex suck for six years until the front office finally brought in a coach that neutered him for a year before turning him loose. Every QB in this article could put up Alex Smith's stats from his seventh year with enough time and patience from a front office.

Cali QBs aren't as hungry as other regions. The SC QBs are pampered as shit. If Mike Glennon is successful NC State is a better school for quarterbacks this generation than SC.

WE PARTYING! LOLSCLOL

"While Carson Palmer, Alex Smith and Randall Cunningham have had solid careers in the pros"

"wait....they didn't mention them????"

dont group cunningham in with those people...

Though that really isn't saying much.

Unitas
Montana
Namath
Marino
Kelly

that's an epic list right there

hard to believe why anything he does is remotely newsworthy

but watching carroll era SC qb's crash and burn is always fun

defend it, because his response doesn't really equate to why they don't produce in the NFL.

And I like how it goes from "L.A." to then San Diego and Santa Barbara so they can say "Southern California QB's" LOL