Jake Locker: Recipient of Football Life Lottery Powerball Award

As evidence of the arduous work involved in sports blogging, DBSF googled "NFL Mock Draft" to research University of Washington QB Jake Locker. After closing out a Groupon page on Banana Republic outerwear, DBSF selected the first five sites that came up. All mock drafts projected Locker going between 8 and 12 overall. (Note: Zero of the five were legit as evidenced by all having the banner ads encouraging me--presumably--to earn a college degree in 6 weeks from the comfort of my personal computing space.)

Now, DBSF never watched Locker play in college nor did he catch any Pac-10 games. But, even without any visual evidence of Locker's abilities, DBSF is shocked to learn that he's projected so high. His four-year college career consists of a 14-15 TD-pic season followed by 1-0, 21-11, and 17-9. He's never completed over 58% of his passes in a season, and in his three biggest games this year he put up Ryan Leafian numbers.

He torched Nebraska for 71 yards on 4-20 passing (Yes 4-20, that's bad for hitting in baseball; basically, that means that he completed half of his check-offs to unguarded running backs standing 5 yards away.) Against Stanford he completed 50% of his 14 passes to go with 2 interceptions. And, finally against Nebraska again in the legendary Bridgepoint Education Holiday Bowl (the name really conjures thoughts of Bear Bryant) Locker ran up 56 yards passing on a 5 for 16 affair.



So the question then is--how in the heck is Locker so highly rated with numbers that scream high school offensive coordinator? The answer? Todd McShay will likely say "intangibles", which is like saying you find a good enough looking, tall, strong white kid who can throw a ball moderately hard, he's worth wasting 3-years and $20 million on. (Exhibit A: JP Lossman. Exhibit B: Any Notre Dame QB of the 21st century).

DBSF believes Locker unearned this distinction in a much more esoteric, and fortuitous manner--he won the Football Life Lottery Powerball. Rather than receive whatever $256 million is after taxes, Locker's winnings consist of normally rational individuals inexplicably irrationally believing that he is the antithesis to what he actually is.

You see, there doesn't exist one piece of data (er, datum) that suggests that Locker should be in his current position. Well, if nothing else DBSF hopes Locker can use his winnings, like any other Powerball winner, to procure for himself the ultimate in American power boating.