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there were times when I looked around terback on a pro team, and they can't. their big private enterprises. You don't
at all this talent and wondered what I I'm proud of that. That's what it's all hear about me in the off season. I'm a
was doing there. And right from the be- about: playing-and winning-and do- pro football player, and that's enough.
ginning I tried to impress one thing on ing something to the best of your abil- Oh, I enjoy antique cars like my '39 La
the club: this Kapp may not be any ities. That's where the fun comes in. So Salle, and I dig music and cowboy boots
good, he may be lacking in certain abil- I try to impress this on the other Vi- and good old American food like tacos
ities, but he wants to win more than any- kings, and maybe it helps a little. Our and enchiladas and frijoles, but those
body else. Maybe every quarterback general manager, Jim Finks, paid me are just to keep me going till the game
thinks the same way; I don't know ev- the greatest compliment: he said that starts. That's when I begin to live. I've
ery quarterback. But I figure I'm play- the club plays 10% better for me than played in one big game or another on
ing with the finest football players in it would for any other quarterback, and every weekend for about 25 of my 32
the world, and there's one department if he's right it's only because I've con- years and I've developed some kind of
where I can beat them all: in desire. I vinced those other characters that I'm rhythm about it. All week long my sys-
can want to win more than anybody there to play football and to win. tem is readying itself for the weekend-
else on earth-and I do. Not for the I'm not interested in publicity or all for Friday night, when we used to play
press, not for the fans and not only for the other stuff. I'm not playing football our high school games, or for Saturday
the money, but mostly for myself, for for the sole purpose of gaining prestige afternoon, when Cal played, or for Sun-
my personal pride. I know a lot of suc- in my off-season job. I'm not interested day afternoon, when the pros play. It's
cessful men, even a few millionaires, but in all those side issues: Brodie and his become so much a part of me that I al-
there's one thing I've got that they don't golf, Namath and his nightclubs, Kra- most become buggy on weekend nights
have and never will have: I can play quar- mer and his books, all those guys with in the off season. Marcia and I have to
go out and do something. If she brought
me a pipe and slippers on weekends,
THE VIKINGS WON 31-14 AS KAPP THREW TOUCHDOWNS TO BEASLEY AND WASHINGTON
I'd go right through the roof.
In a way, I'm lucky that my high school
coach, A. I. Lewis, slipped me into the
quarterbacking position, or I probably
wouldn't be playing ball at all. Where
would they play me? It's a fundamental
fact about quarterba.cks, almost every
one of them, that they're not good
enough to play any other position. Quar-
terback is the natural refuge for a guy
with a big mouth and few natural abil-
ities. So you find that pro quarterbacks
are the guys who wanted to play more
than the others, the guys who wanted
to get out and win, the misfits. Look at
them stumbling around out there. Where
would Sonny Jurgensen play if he wasn't
a quarterback (and the finest passer in
football)? Where would Bart Starr play?
Even the physical types like Greg Cook
and Greg Landry and Roman Gabriel
would have a tough time breaking in at
another position. Can they run fast
enough and hard enough to fit into a
backfield? I doubt it. They're like all
the rest of us: not big enough to be line-
men, not fast enough to be ends, not
quick enough to be running backs. So
they stand out there and throw a foot-
ball at a tree for weeks on end until
they have mastered this very unnatural
act called passing, and then they hang
out a sign that says "quarterback."
But that's not the most mysterious
fact about quarterbacking, not by a long
shot. The most mysterious thing is the
way these quarterbacks, these undesir-
ables, get all the attention. There's not
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