Monday, December 01, 2008

By PAUL GUTIERREZ
THE SACRAMENTO BEE

last updated: September 07, 2008 03:11:52 AM

After J.T. O'Sullivan sets up under center today for the 49ers, the pride of UC Davis will drop back into a pocket of not only protection, but ultimately, of inspiration.

No, San Francisco's offensive line won't be the source of O'Sullivan's shelter, though it holds the key to his health and well-being. Rather, the former Aggies star will be joined by the ghosts of Phil Simms and Randall Cunningham. Of Ken Anderson and Dave Krieg.

Of Brian Sipe and Rich Gannon. Of Steve McNair and, of course, UCD Hall of Famer Ken O'Brien.

Indeed, on this opening kickoff weekend, O'Sullivan can only hope ultimately to gain admission into that exclusive and quixotic fraternity, the brotherhood rushed by and composed of small-school quarterbacks who made it big in the NFL. And while six, possibly seven, teams on Sunday will start quarterbacks who haven't won a regular-season NFL game, and with Baltimore's Joe Flacco and his Division I-AA Delaware pedigree joining O'Sullivan as a small-school survivor, it just goes to show you need not have gone to a college football factory or been in a power conference to start in the NFL.

It all goes back to scouting ... or lack thereof.

"All of us," said NFL scouting guru Gil Brandt, the architect of the Dallas Cowboys' powerhouses of the 1970s, "no matter how smart we are, or how dumb we are, don't know what the right formula for a quarterback is.

"It's harder for guys to fall through the cracks now."

Maybe, maybe not. Because even today, counting O'Sullivan and Flacco, 12 starting quarterbacks -- nearly 38 percent of the league, compared with 25 percent in 1985, the year of Flacco's birth -- attended campuses not only not considered college football powerhouses, but on college grounds you'd need Google Earth to find.

Guys like Brett Favre, who went to Southern Mississippi and starts a new chapter of his Hall of Fame career with the New York Jets. And the guy he replaced in the Meadowlands but who found a home in Miami, Chad Pennington and his Marshall lineage.

The others: Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger (Miami of Ohio), Jacksonville's David Garrard (East Carolina), Minnesota's Tarvaris Jackson (Alabama State), Detroit's Jon Kitna (Central Washington), Tampa Bay's Jeff Garcia (San Jose State), Carolina's Jake Delhomme (Louisiana-Lafayette), Arizona's Kurt Warner (Northern Iowa) and the crossover star of this phenomenon, Dallas' Tony Romo (Eastern Illinois).

Romo, a two-time Pro Bowler who threw for 4,211 yards and 36 touchdowns last season, is the poster boy and cultural icon of the movement.

The undrafted Romo also was not heavily recruited out of Burlington High School in Wisconsin. He was discovered only because the father of the Eastern Illinois offensive coordinator mailed copies of a Racine newspaper with articles of Romo's prep exploits to his son. Intrigued, the Division I-AA Panthers brought Romo to Charleston on a partial scholarship.

Before the Internet and such self-promoting Web sites as YouTube, scouting small schools was taxing and cumbersome. Which is why Brandt said the Cowboys paid a Lubbock sportswriter to help them by distributing questionnaires to trainers and coaches at small colleges out yonder way.

Few small-school signal callers know the feeling of winning a Super Bowl, and even fewer have their busts on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Of the 23 modern-era quarterbacks enshrined in Canton, only Terry Bradshaw (Louisiana Tech) and Steve Young (BYU) could be considered small-college guys, though the Cougars did win a national title in 1984. And just Roethlisberger, Warner, Favre, Young, Bradshaw, Trent Dilfer (Fresno State), Doug Williams (Grambling) and Phil Simms (Morehead State) are small-school, Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks.

Yet for every success story, there is a cautionary tale.

"When things don't go (well), when you're sitting at home and you have no other choice, you look at other people's paths to play in this league, in this position, and there's not a whole lot of smooth stories," admitted O'Sullivan, on his eighth NFL roster in seven seasons.

"You're going to have to claw and scratch just to stay in the league. You're going to have to do everything you can to have the opportunity to make a team (and) once you get that opportunity to make a team, to show them that you can play."

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