The quarterback, colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern American football, the quarterback is usually considered the leader of the offense, and is often responsible for calling the play in the huddle. The quarterback also touches the ball on almost every offensive play, and is almost always the offensive player that throws forward passes. When the QB is tackled behind the line of scrimmage, it is called a sack.
In professional sports, as opposed to amateur sports, participants receive payment for their performance. Professionalism in sport has come to the fore through a combination of developments. Mass media and increased leisure have brought larger audiences, so that sports organizations or teams can command large incomes. As a result, more sportspeople can afford to make sport their primary career, devoting the training time necessary to increase skills, physical condition, and experience to modern levels of achievement. This proficiency has also helped boost the popularity of sports. In most sports played professionally there are many more amateur than professional players, though amateurs and professionals do not usually compete.
Gridiron football, also known as North American football, or in North America as simply football, is a family of football team sports primarily played in the United States and Canada. American football, which uses 11 players, is the form played in the United States and the best known form of gridiron football worldwide, while Canadian football, which uses 12 players, predominates in Canada. Other derivative varieties include arena football, flag football and amateur games such as touch and street football. Football is played at professional, collegiate, high school, semi-professional, and amateur levels.
Amateur sports are sports in which participants engage largely or entirely without remuneration. The distinction is made between amateur sporting participants and professional sporting participants, who are paid for the time they spend competing and training. In the majority of sports which feature professional players, the professionals will participate at a higher standard of play than amateur competitors, as they can train full-time without the stress of having another job. The majority of worldwide sporting participants are amateurs.
An athletic coach is a person coaching in sport, involved in the direction, instruction, and training of a sports team or athlete.
A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of the firm's marketing and sales functions as well as the day-to-day operations of the business. Frequently, the general manager is responsible for effective planning, delegating, coordinating, staffing, organizing, and decision making to attain desirable profit making results for an organization.
An athletic director is an administrator at many American clubs or institutions, such as colleges and universities, as well as in larger high schools and middle schools, who oversees the work of coaches and related staff involved in athletic programs.
The Alabama Crimson Tide refers to the intercollegiate athletic varsity teams that represent the University of Alabama, located in Tuscaloosa. The Crimson Tide teams compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I as a member of the Southeastern Conference (SEC). The Spirit Squads compete in the UCA and UDA College National Championships.
College athletics in the United States or college sports in the United States refers primarily to sports and athletic training and competition organized and funded by institutions of tertiary education.
Sports in the United States are an important part of the nation's culture. Historically, the national sport has been baseball. However, in more recent decades, American football has been the most popular sport in terms of broadcast viewership audience. Basketball has grown into the mainstream American sports scene since the 1980s, with ice hockey and soccer doing the same around the turn of the 21st century.
Carl D. Peterson For more than 50 years, Carl Peterson was a creative force in the world of American Football, starting at the high school level, through small college ball, to major college football, and on to professional football where he enjoyed great success with the Philadelphia Eagles (NFL), Philadelphia Stars (USFL) and the Kansas City Chiefs (NFL.) Peterson stepped on every rung of the football ladder, working as an assistant coach, head coach, administrative assistant, scout, personnel director, general manager, president, chiefs executive officer and owner in his time in the game. He is best known for his 20 years (1989-2008) as president, general manager, and chief executive officer of the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League (NFL). Since leaving the Chiefs, Peterson has worked in number of related football-areas, serving as Chairman of USA Football, the national governing body for the sport on the amateur level. He's also served on a number of consulting committees for the NFL league office in New York and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. He was also a consultant for FanVision, an in-stadium fan technology device that served numerous NFL teams and Division I universities. It was owned by Miami Dolphins’ owner Stephen Ross. Peterson is also a principal and partner with Dick Vermeil Wines, located in Calistoga, California, with his former head coach. Peterson was among the finalist for consideration in the contributor category for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame class of 2023.
In college athletics in the United States, recruiting is the process in which college coaches add prospective student athletes to their roster each off-season. This process typically culminates in a coach extending an athletic scholarship offer to a player who is about to be a junior in high school or higher. There are instances, mostly at lower division universities, where no athletic scholarship can be awarded and where the player pays for tuition, housing, and textbook costs out of pocket or from financial aid. During this recruiting process, schools must comply with rules that define who may be involved in the recruiting process, when recruiting may occur and the conditions under which recruiting may be conducted. Recruiting rules seek, as much as possible, to control intrusions into the lives of prospective student-athletes. The NCAA defines recruiting as “any solicitation of prospective student-athletes or their parents by an institutional staff member or by a representative of the institution’s athletics interests for the purpose of securing a prospective student-athlete’s enrollment and ultimate participation in the institution’s intercollegiate athletics program."
Phillip Vernor Olsen is a former center and defensive tackle in the National Football League (NFL) for the Los Angeles Rams and Denver Broncos. He was also a member of the Buffalo Bills. He is the younger brother of Pro Football Hall of Famer Merlin Olsen.
The San Francisco Dons is the nickname of the athletic teams at the University of San Francisco (USF). The Dons compete in NCAA Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) as members of the West Coast Conference (WCC), of which USF is a charter member.
The Brown Bears are the sports teams that represent Brown University, an American university located in Providence, Rhode Island. The Bears are part of the Ivy League conference. Brown's mascot is Bruno. Both the men's and women's teams share the name, competing in 34 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I sports. In football, the Bears, along with all other the Ivy League teams, compete in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS).
American football, also known as gridiron football, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with possession of the oval-shaped football, attempts to advance down the field by running with the ball or throwing it, while the defense, the team without possession of the ball, aims to stop the offense's advance and to take control of the ball for themselves. The offense must advance at least ten yards in four downs or plays; if they fail, they turn over the football to the defense, but if they succeed, they are given a new set of four downs to continue the drive. A game is won by the team with the higher number of points, which are scored primarily by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone for a touchdown or kicking the ball through the opponent's goalposts for a field goal.
A general manager (GM) in American football is typically the head of football operations responsible for hiring a head coach, heading the scouting department, and handling free agent transactions and trades. Under such a model, the GM reports directly to the owner or team president. However, some team owners serve as their own GM or employ one who act in a supporting role to the head coach. Al Davis of the Oakland Raiders was an example of an owner who also served as GM, while Bill Belichick is an example of a head coach having de facto GM responsibilities during his tenure with the New England Patriots.
Louis John "Luke" Urban was an American multi-sport athlete and coach. He played four seasons of professional American football in the National Football League and two years of Major League Baseball with the Boston Braves. Urban was also a college football coach, a college and high school basketball coach, and a minor league baseball manager.
Bob LaMonte is an American sports agent who works primarily with National Football League coaches and executives. He is the founder and president of Professional Sports Representation, Inc. Early on LaMonte also represented college coaches and Major League Baseball and NFL players. In 2018, included in his fifty-one clients represented were eight NFL head coaches and eight NFL general managers. In 2020 LaMonte represented three of the Top Ten NFL's Highest Paid Coaches - by sportingnews.com. Thus far LaMonte has negotiated over $3 billion in coaching contracts throughout his 40-plus year career and has been regarded as one of the most powerful coaching agents in the NFL, whose negotiations have helped change the pay-scales of the NFL coach.
The Wheeling Cardinals are the athletic teams that represent Wheeling University, located in Wheeling, West Virginia, in intercollegiate sports as a member of the Division II level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), primarily competing in the Mountain East Conference (MEC) as a founding member since the 2013–14 academic year. The Cardinals previously competed in the defunct West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WVIAC) from 1957–58 to 2012–13.
