Fred Bowen's "The Score" column,
February 27, 2004, Washington Post

The Weighing Game

The two biggest jobs around the nation's capital are probably president of the United States and quarterback of the Washington Redskins. Folks will be talking until this fall about who is next in line to fill both those jobs.

Since this is a sports column, let's skip the political stuff and get right to the Redskins' quarterback controversy.

The Skins just signed veteran Jacksonville Jaguar quarterback Mark Brunell to a big contract. Now Patrick Ramsey, last year's starter, is upset. Ramsey thinks that Joe Gibbs, who is returning as the Skins' coach, should let him lead the team, not bring in someone new. After all, Ramsey showed lots of guts, hanging in the pocket and taking a pounding, while leading the sorry Skins for most of last season. Maybe he should be rewarded by automatically getting the nod to be the starting quarterback of the new and improved Redskins this fall.

But that isn't the way that sports -- especially pro sports -- works. Sports is about competition. Not only competition with the other team, but with your own teammates.

This kind of competition is not as big a deal in kids' sports, where all the kids on a team play (or should play) about an equal amount of time. But even a kids' team only has room for a certain number of pitchers, point guards or goalies. If you have a favorite position, you may have to prove that you play it better than your teammates before the coach lets you try in a game. By high school, kids have to compete for every second of playing time.

Sometimes the biggest challenge in sports is not beating the other team, but hanging in there after you have been benched. Maybe you've been sidelined because a new coach wants to try something different, or because some hotshot showed up who the coach thinks is better than you. When it happens, all you can do is work harder, stay ready and hope you do well when you get your chance.

Ramsey is no exception. Sure, he has shown that he is a smart, tough quarterback with a rifle arm. But Ramsey's passing statistics don't make him Peyton Manning; in fact, they put him in the middle of the pack. Gibbs is trying to make the Redskins better, so if he thinks he can get a better quarterback than Ramsey, he'll grab him. All Ramsey can do is compete like crazy to show that he's still the best quarterback on the team.

And what if Ramsey gets benched? Like anyone else, he can work harder, stay ready and hope he does well when he gets his chance. Ramsey likely will play next season. Most National Football League teams use two or more quarterbacks in a season because of injuries.

So I hope that Ramsey will stay ready. And stay a Redskin.