100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters

The Mid-American Conference produced five NFL quarterbacks in six years. Chad Pennington went 18th overall to the Jets in 2000. Byron Leftwich went seventh to Jacksonville in 2003. Charlie Frye went to Cleveland in the third round of the 2005 draft. Bruce Gradkowski went to Tampa Bay in 2006 after leading Toledo to a MAC championship.

Ben Roethlisberger was the best of all of them.

The Pittsburgh Steelers took the Miami (Ohio) quarterback 11th overall in 2004 — the same draft class as Eli Manning and Philip Rivers. Scouts questioned whether a MAC quarterback could handle the NFL. Carmen Policy, then the Cleveland Browns’ president, summed up the skepticism: “He comes from such a small system and such a small program, it’s questionable whether or not he’ll be able to compete in the NFL.”

Roethlisberger won all 13 of his regular-season starts as a rookie.

The MAC’s Quarterback

He almost never played the position. Roethlisberger was a wide receiver for three years at Findlay High School in northwest Ohio. Ohio State recruited him as a tight end. He didn’t take a snap at quarterback until his senior year.

Terry Hoeppner saw him throw at a Miami summer camp in 1999 and offered him a scholarship — as a quarterback.

“People ask me all of the time why I went to Miami,” Roethlisberger said. “There were a bunch of reasons, academics, the chance to play early in my career and to be closer to home. But the biggest reason I went there was because of Coach Hoeppner. He was a father figure to me.”

Three seasons later, Roethlisberger had thrown for 10,829 yards and 84 touchdowns. He set every major passing record in program history. In 2003, after an opening loss to Iowa, Miami won 13 straight — including a 49-27 demolition of No. 20 Bowling Green in the MAC Championship Game, where Roethlisberger threw for 440 yards. The RedHawks beat Louisville 49-28 in the GMAC Bowl and finished No. 10 in the AP Poll.

He finished ninth in Heisman Trophy voting. From a MAC school in Oxford, Ohio.

The Era

That five-year stretch changed how the country saw the MAC. Three first-round quarterbacks from a conference most casual fans couldn’t name. Pennington won NFL Comeback Player of the Year twice with the Jets. Leftwich became an NFL coach after his playing career. Frye set more than 50 records at Akron. Gradkowski carved out a decade in the league.

The MAC had debuted midweek games on ESPN at the turn of the century, and the quarterback talent set the tone. Roethlisberger’s 2003 season — Miami in the AP top 10, a top-10 Heisman finish from a campus in Oxford, Ohio — helped put MACtion into the vocabulary of college football fans across the nation. Tuesday and Wednesday nights on ESPN became appointment television. The pipeline built the brand.

Two Rings

Bill Cowher acknowledged the doubt on draft day. “Certainly the questions of where he played,” the Steelers coach said.

Roethlisberger answered with two Super Bowl championships, 64,088 career passing yards, 418 touchdowns and 18 seasons as the Steelers’ franchise quarterback. He is a likely Pro Football Hall of Famer.

He came back to Oxford. He donated $1 million to Miami’s athletic program. The school retired his No. 7 jersey and inducted him into its Hall of Fame alongside Hoeppner, who died of brain cancer in 2007. They went in together — the coach who believed and the quarterback who proved him right.

“To be able to do it with Coach Hoeppner, which is one of the main reasons why I went to Miami, is really special,” Roethlisberger said. “The only thing that would be better is if he would have been there.”

Miami calls itself the Cradle of Coaches — Paul Brown, Weeb Ewbank, Bo Schembechler, John Harbaugh, Sean McVay. Five coaches connected to one MAC school. Three of them won Super Bowls.

Roethlisberger isn’t a coach. He’s the program’s greatest player. And he proved that a MAC quarterback from a campus of fewer than 20,000 in southwest Ohio could be one of the best to ever play the position.

They told you it didn’t matter. Here are 100 reasons it does.