The Sports Corner

Nick Montana won’t follow his father’s footsteps, chooses UW

There isn’t another position in sports that compares to being a quarterback.

You touch the ball on every single play. You have to make decisions in an instant. You have to adjust to what the defense presents you to get out of bad situations.

The game is basically all in your hands. There is a tremendous amount of pressure involved with it and it will either make you or break you. No one has ever handled that kind of pressure as well as Joe Montana.

Joe Cool did it better than anyone. It seemed like that no matter what the situation, he had the demeanor to accomplish what he needed to. Almost all of the other great ones don’t share the same psychological gifts that Montana had.

That is what sets him apart and why many consider him second to none. Nothing ever phased him.

Of course, Joe Montana never was the son of the greatest quarterback of all time.

That would be Nick Montana, Joe’s youngest son. The same one who plays quarterback at “Hollywood High” (formally known as Oaks Christian Academy) throwing passes to the son of Will Smith and competing against the son of Wayne Gretzky.

Nick has started one year of high school football, but he had offers from all over the country from places like Alabama, Ohio State, and Notre Dame.

Notre Dame is the place legends are made in college football. That is where the legend of Joe Cool came to fruition. Joe won a national championship in South Bend his junior year and topped that by coming back from near hypothermia to beat Houston in the Cotton Bowl when he was a senior.

It is also the place where hype goes to die. Jay-Z’s seventh album says it all when it comes to being the quarterback for Notre Dame. It is a gift and a curse at the same time.

If you want your name in the lights, come to Notre Dame. If you want to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated, come to Notre Dame. If you want to be on national television every week, come to Notre Dame.

At the same time, if you want to be ripped on ESPN for throwing three interceptions, come to Notre Dame. If you want to be criticized by the largest fanbase in America for having a bad game, come to Notre Dame. If you want to be skewered by a holier than thou set of alumni for doing stuff every other college kid in America is doing, come to Notre Dame.

There are some that are impervious to the curse of being a Notre Dame quarterback. They accept the challenge and can roll with the punches being thrown their way from all angles.

It appears Nick Montana is not one of those people. I can’t say definitively that the pressure he would have faced is the reason why he chose to commit to the University of Washington instead of Notre Dame (it seemed like Notre Dame was never even close to earning his commitment). I can’t imagine that it didn’t play at least a part in his overall apprehension towards attending his father’s alma mater in the recruiting process.

If Nick selected the Irish he would have been always expected to somehow live up to what his Dad had accomplished. At UW he will still be Nick, son of Joe Montana. But at Notre Dame he would have been Nick, son of the greatest quarterback of all time at the most prestigious program of all time and oh, by the way, the guy we expect to bring us our first national championship in over twenty years.

Right now in Seattle the best thing they have going for them in terms of sports is the MLS team. (Sadly, I am not joking.) Ken Griffey Jr. is batting a shade over .220 and he is getting standing ovations. If Nick Montana leads them back to a bowl game after the debacle that was the Ty Willingham era they will probably throw a parade.

At every school in America, being the starting quarterback is not an easy job. Being the starting quarterback for the University of Notre Dame is like being at every other school times ten.

Some kids are desperate for that challenge. They want that kind of pressure more than anything. But like I said, none of those kids have the label of Joe Montana’s son.