Saint Louis School’s Marcus Mariota was the first quarterback from Hawaii to win the Heisman Trophy.
Tua Tagovailoa, also out of Kalaepohaku, last month became the first quarterback from the state to lead his team to a national championship.
Unless, of course, you count the efforts of Mililani High’s McKenzie Milton in taking Central Florida to a claim on a non-College Football Playoff crown as the only 13-0 team in the Football Bowl Subdivision seven days earlier in the Peach Bowl.
And the Knights clearly do count it, as the Pro Bowl festivities in Orlando where they donned black “National Champions” shirts last Sunday amply demonstrated.
But, as we sit here today watching the Super Bowl, who, you wonder, might become the first Aloha State QB to make the breakthrough of taking a team to a Super Bowl? Or, how many more Roman numerals might pass before it happens?
For a state that has had nearly 20 local players across nearly every position appear in Super Bowls, but none — yet — as a quarterback, it makes for interesting speculation and debate.
Especially since a few years ago it seemed that entertaining it was a prospect so distant as to be laughable.
But now, especially in light of events in the remarkable 2017 season, it is not so far fetched.
Mariota will begin his fourth season in the NFL in September, and the way things have been going, would anybody be surprised to see him joined there by Tagovailoa, Milton and, possibly Pearl City’s Jordan Ta’amu, who will be a senior at Mississippi?
And somewhere down the line, maybe Tagovailoa’s brother, Taulia. After moving on from Kapolei, he has continued to earn raves in Alabama, where he will be a senior in high school. He finished third in the voting for Alabama’s “Mr. Football” this past season.
Naturally, the chance at pro sports’ biggest stage comes down to pure luck and circumstance. Having Tom Brady retire sometime before he gets his AARP card might help, too.
A breakthrough requires good health, strong play and being surrounded by the right team at the right time.
On that score, think back to the late Joe Francis, who played for Green Bay in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He would have been a candidate had he either not gotten injured or, perhaps, come along a little later.
The father of Ikaika Alama-Francis, he spent time backing up Bart Starr and Babe Parilli for the Packers, even getting in a start, before the Packers hired Vince Lombardi and the Super Bowl was created.
Mariota, while encouraged by Tennessee’s return to the NFL playoffs for the first time since 2009 and first victory in 14 years, makes no bones about the prize that he and the Titans eye. “It is going all the way, that’s what you practice all year for and play for, to get to the Super Bowl,” Mariota said on a home visit last month.
A point driven home by the fact that while Mariota was in Minneapolis for pre-Super Bowl events, he said he was leaving this morning because it was tough to watch the team the Titans lost to in the divisional playoffs, New England, play in the ultimate game.
The prospects of a quarterback from Hawaii leading a team in the Super Bowl?
No longer is it a question of ‘if’ it will happen. After the events of the eye-opening 2017 season, now, it is more likely ‘who’ it will be.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
