L.A.
quarterback’s career culminates
in hall of fame
Patrick Hodgson
This
weekend marked an eccentric event for
football that continued to set a new
milestone for quarterbacks. Recently
30-plus sports writers voted and ultimately
enshrined Henry Warren Moon in the Football
Hall of Fame as the first black quarterback.
For this reason, Moon went on to play collegiate football at the University
of Washington rather than local powerhouses such as USC or UCLA. Those schools
wanted to convert the rifle-armed Moon into a running back or wide receiver.
After a successful career for the Huskies, including a victory in the 1978
Rose Bowl over the highly favored Michigan Wolverines that earned him MVP honors,
Moon went undrafted simply because of the color of his skin. The equivalent
to this in today’s game would be like Vince Young not getting drafted
in April.
Still the Los Angeles native wanted to play quarterback so he took his skills
with him up to Canada, joining the Canadian Football League. Moon proved to
all the critics he belonged, playing with the game’s best and dominating
the CFL the way
Joe Montana dominated the NFL in the ’80s. Moon led the Edmonton Eskimos
to an unprecedented five successive Grey
Cup championships, the Canadian version of the Superbowl, from 1978-82. During
this time, Moon captured two MVP trophies and acquired over 21,000 yards during
his career.
What’s even more astonishing is once Moon moved to the NFL, he was still
able to pass for almost 5,000 yards, ranking fourth all time in the NFL. Additionally,
he was voted to nine straight pro bowls from 1988-97. That’s one more
pro bowl than Joe Montana, and the same amount as John Elway and Dan Marino,
who are all argued to be the best quarterbacks who ever lived. How many could
he have gone to if he was drafted out of college and didn’t play in the
CFL? Perhaps 10, 11 or, maybe, 12?
Moreover, the great pocket passer can always be remembered for resurrecting
the Houston Oilers, which were one of the laughing stocks in the league prior
to his arrival. Moon’s place in history is special. If we combine his
CFL and NFL statistics, he would have had about 71,000 yards and 435 touchdowns,
all of which are monumentally higher than the NFL records for each category.
And perhaps the greatest achievement of all is the example he gave young black
quarterbacks such as Donovan McNabb, Michael Vick, Daunte Culpepper and several
others, an example that has now paved the way for this new milestone for quarterbacks.
|
