In the past 12 years, the Northwestern football team has played 142 games with eight different starting quarterbacks. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll say there have been three in that span worth noting:
Steve Schnur -> Zak Kustok -> Brett Basanez -> _____
It’s a simple lineage, really, easier to fathom than a Derby pedigree. But as always when dealing with successions and bloodlines, a great unknown always looms: that element of blank.
How do you spawn a great quarterback? A field general? An unquestioned leader? How do you ensure that blank, preceded by legends, is followed by one, too?
In time, these questions will be answered by at least one of four kids competing to take his place as NU’s next point man. There is one redshirt sophomore, two redshirt freshmen and a high school senior. There is a football natural, a two-sport stud, a track prodigy and a basketball star. There are four champions.
“I think they’ve made some real progress,” says coach Randy Walker. “They’re not game ready yet, but we’re a long way from where we were last December.”
There are, however, big shoes to fill. Look again at that lineage: Steve Schnur, the quarterback who engineered the most amazing college football story of the ’90s (or ever?); Zak Kustok, the humble leader who guided the Wildcats to a share of the Big Ten title in 2000; Brett Basanez, the gunslinger who holds more records than an LP briefcase.
Is the next QB grandee ready to emerge?
The kids’ journeys didn’t begin here, at this point of competition, comparison and dissection, and they probably won’t end here, either. But the arcs of their football careers are about to intersect, merging with past and present, and, if form holds true, bridging the gap towards the future.
THE LEGEND AND THE LINEAGE
Sure, the records are nice. Thirty times the name “Brett Basanez” appears in the school record books, including in virtually every major career passing and total offense category under the sun. But while statistics may establish legends, fame for the individual never lies in numbers. Real-life validation is achieved in the real world, in places like, oh, the Entertainment Capital of the World.
To Basanez, it was a sign that people actually noticed his and the Cats’ accomplishments. About a month ago, he was in the city where Sinatra had slept (and immortalized with his sleepless nights), in a hotel named after a leggy showgirl. The former quarterback was walking through the Flamingo with his girlfriend when he overheard one guy buzz to another, “Hey, that’s Brett Basanez.” One of them – among the group of middle-aged men sitting there at 10:30 in the morning – piped up, “Hey Brett!”
“I kind of kept walking, I really didn’t expect too much of it,” Basanez recalls. “And my girlfriend actually turned around, shook her head and gave them the thumbs up. And they all went crazy.”
As entertainers will attest, you ain’t nothin’ till you’ve won over Vegas. “It’s not why we play the game, it’s not why you come to a school like this, it’s not something you look for,” Basanez reminds us, “but when it happens, it’s nice.”
Basanez, oft-maligned for three seasons for not being the winner that Kustok was, achieved validation in his final season. As a fifth-year senior, he led the Cats to a 7-5 record and an appearance in the Sun Bowl, all the while accumulating the accolades that had been denied him before (SI.com’s Mark Beech named him college football’s Player of the Year). Baz’s legend, as the records and the Vegas episode will show, has been established.
The question now is: Who will replace him?
And – is it possible to?
“I think (the underclassmen’s) biggest challenge is not feeling they have to compete with what Baz did last year and not put too much pressure on themselves,” says Kustok, who carries himself with the same humility now that made him popular back in his day.
Kustok should know something about replacing legends. He was QB No. 4 in NU’s search for the next Schnur, who in 1995 led the Cats to their first bowl game since 1949. And not just any bowl, but the granddaddy of them all, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. Then, lest anyone think it was a fluke, Schnur and the Cats did it again in 1996 – 7-1 in the Big Ten, conference co-champions. Story of the century! sports editors around the nation roared.
And then, that blank. A brick wall with 5-7 in black ink, followed by a winless Big Ten campaign. And suddenly Gary Barnett was moving on, leaving the program he could not possibly resuscitate any further. Reality, point blank.
Enter Kustok. Two years later, in 2000, the Cats would share another Big Ten championship. and things again looked dandy.
So now you understand the pressure this heralded Arlington Heights, Ill., recruit was under. Kustok, who remembered being embraced by fifth-year senior QB Ron Paulus when he was a freshman at Notre Dame, mentored Basanez during the kid’s redshirt year. “He was a prefect role model for me,” Baz says.
Basanez has continued the tradition of extending a helping hand, counseling the quarterback candidates for next fall: C.J. Bacher, the redshirt sophomore, and redshirt freshmen Mike Kafka and Andrew Brewer. In this way, the baton gets passed from one to another.
But will the young ones succeed?
THE EXPERIENCED ONE
Bacher remembers his first collegiate game like it was yesterday. And he would like to forget, thank you very much.
It was Sept. 3, home against Ohio, with his family here from Sacramento for the season-opener. “I felt a bit jittery,” Bacher says. He thinks the first play “must have been a running play.” His first pass he knows was a bootleg that went for positive yardage.
But after that, things went bad. Then they got worse.
Bacher recalls a blitz that forced him to rush his throw and miss an open receiver. The possession would end after he dashed for the goal line, got stuffed just when he could smell the chalk and fumbled the ball. He suffered a concussion in the process.
The next possession, Bacher threw an interception in the end zone on a failed fade pattern.
As Bacher’s father, K.C., remembers it, “His sister Stephanie, who was there with us, said, ‘Well, look on the bright side – it can’t get any worse, right?'”
“He knew he didn’t play well, but his confidence wasn’t shaken in any way,” says K.C., who was an all-conference cornerback at New Hampshire during his college days (New Hampshire plays at NU next season on Sept. 9). “That’s the thing I noticed the most – he was itching to get out there again, he felt he learned a few things.”
In retrospect, there was no reason to believe Bacher would be shaken. He is, after all, a product of Jesuit High School’s Dan Carmazzi, a coach who has tutored three NFL quarterbacks: Ken O’Brien, Gio Carmazzi and J.T. O’Sullivan. He was an honors student with a 4.5 GPA and 1290 on his SAT. During his junior year, he led his team to an undefeated season and a sectional championship. He was a SuperPrep All-American, joining the likes of former NU players Loren Howard, Luis Castillo and Zach Strief, just to name the most recent trio.
Worried about a shaky debut? Not a chance.
Against Purdue later in the season, Bacher entered the game in an important third down situation. “Coach (Mike) Dunbar (former offensive coordinator) called a screen, and the line blocked it perfectly,” Bacher says. “All I had to do was pitch it out to Tyrell (Sutton) and he did the rest of the work.
“It was a lot of fun getting it there, though.”
Fun, for this sophomore, also includes hanging out with his girlfriend – to a degree that subjects him to razzing from teammates – singing karaoke and playing online poker. Fun times, Bacher hopes, await on the field as well.
THE ‘ALL-AMERICAN KID’
Kafka’s high school football coach says he doesn’t want to embarrass the poor kid, but he just can’t help it.
“I hate to sound corny, but if I had a daughter, he’s the kind of guy I’d want
her to date and marry,” says Todd Kuska, who has coached Chicago’s St. Rita High School for the past eight years. “He’s just a straight-laced, All-American kid. I don’t want him to get made fun of, but he’s just a great kid.”
Kuska can’t help the praise. During Kafka’s senior year at St. Rita, the coach witnessed firsthand as the kid just about single-handedly carried his football team through its playoff games.
In a first round game against Mt. Carmel, St. Rita’s star tailback broke his leg early in the third quarter with the team trailing by a touchdown. Kuska remembers pulling his quarterback aside and saying, “We’re looking at you now. You’ve got to shoulder this thing. Everything’s going to revolve around you.”
Kafka rushed and passed for more than 100 yards in the second half and threw a touchdown with one minute remaining to tie the game at 14. St. Rita would eventually lose in overtime, but that wasn’t the story of the game: Afterwards, Kuska learned that Kafka had actually separated his shoulder in the third quarter and played through the pain.
“If I would have known he had a separated shoulder, he wouldn’t have been in the game,” Kuska says. “But he didn’t tell anybody. He knew our fate was resting on his shoulders – no pun intended – whether separated or not.”
The real silver screen moment, however, came the following week, when St. Rita played in the first round of the Prep Bowl playoffs. The team, playing without Kafka in the first half, trailed 24-14 going into halftime. Here’s where you cue the violins. Kafka entered the game in the third quarter and completed 8-of-10 passes for 121 yards and two touchdowns. His team won 49-32.
The following week, in a season-ending two-point loss, Kafka took on the load of a running back, rushing 32 times for 186 yards and a touchdown, in addition to two scores through the air. “From there, I knew he was destined for great things,” Kuska says.
Kafka was quite the baseball player, too. As a 12-year-old, he played on national TV in a regional game with a trip to Williamsport, Pa., on the line (his team lost). As a senior in high school, Kafka batted .405 and would have considered entering the Major League Baseball draft had he not already signed a football scholarship at NU – “The big thing was academic prestige,” he says.
“He wants to be the best he can be in everything,” Kuska says. “He’s the kind of guy who will work above and beyond what’s expected of him, work his butt off to make everyone around him better and be the best person he can be.”
THE ATHLETE
His teammates on the sideline went wild. Brewer started right, stopped on a dime, lowered his shoulders and busted through the line. Then he really put his 4.4, 40-yard dash speed on display. It was sayonara, as defenders seemed to move in slow motion, even as they latched onto his jersey and got dragged downfield.
Last Saturday, as coaches alternated Kafka, Bacher and Brewer at quarterback in a full-pad scrimmage, there was no doubt who the most electrifying player was. Although not the most polished passer, Brewer has the ability to electrify onlookers at every turn.
“He can run,” says Basanez, who watched Brewer and company from the sidelines last Saturday. “I was talking to (offensive coordinator Garrick) McGee on the phone, and I basically attributed Brewer to a (former Penn State quarterback) Michael Robinson-type player, where he could really hurt you with his legs, and if he learned to hurt you with his arm he could be a very dangerous player.”
Brewer has always been the natural athlete. He was an NSIC All-American in the 4×400 relay in 2004, and an Oklahoma state champion in track. As a junior, he led the Jenks football team to a state championship over rival Tulsa Union.
The next year, Union returned the favor by upsetting undefeated Jenks in the finals. The losing locker room “was like the next worse thing to burying a relative,” says Jenks head coach Allan Trimble.
Brewer, who had played defensive back in addition to QB, took the loss especially hard. When he emerged from the locker room, his father could tell he was still shaken.
“First thing I did was hug him, told him I was proud of him,” Paul Brewer says. “Then I asked him to look at me, and I asked, ‘Did you leave it all on the field?’
“And he said, ‘Dad, I did everything I could to help us win tonight. We just couldn’t get it done.'”
Andrew Brewer says the loss stayed with him for about a month or two, which he spent doing lots of soul-searching. A devout Christian, Brewer says he eventually “let God take it away from me, because it kind of ended up being a burden.”
“God showed me how to live in both extremes of life, being on top and then getting there and losing,” Brewer says. “I think I learned a lot more from losing than winning, actually.”
Unlike the stereotypical athlete, the kind portrayed in a Tom Wolfe novel, Brewer is the beau ideal of the good kid, one who prefers hanging out with one of the religious groups on campus than attending a party. Brewer’s roommate, Tyler Compton, admits that he often looks to Brewer for spiritual advice. “A lot of people do,” he says.
Neither Andrew’s father nor his longtime pastor, Wally Nunn, can recall a time when he got into major trouble. “That’s remarkable in this day and age, to find somebody of that character,” Nunn says. “He’s just a good kid.”
THE COMPETITOR
When McGee recruited Joe Mauro out of Hurst, Texas, a suburb called “the Hub” because it’s between Dallas and Fort Worth, he assured the Bell H.S. junior that he would get his chance to compete for starting QB.
McGee didn’t need to say any more.
“The offense they run here is perfect for what I can do,” Mauro says. “And, hey, I’m a smart guy, and this is a smart school.”
Mauro, angular-faced with blue eyes and blonde hair, is your prototypical Texas athlete. At 6-foot-4 and 210 pounds, Mauro had designs of playing college basketball for most of his life, up until his growth spurt stopped in 10th grades. That same year, he took over as the starting quarterback on the varsity football team, a move that nudged him onto the football path.
Mauro got so good with the pigskin that he caught the attention of the University of Texas, which was looking to sign a quarterback to eventually replace then-junior Vince Young.
“It was, ‘Hey, we’re Texas, and you live in Texas,’ ” Mauro says. “I never really had the connection, communication with the coaches that I did here, and that was really a big thing.”
NU began to pull away on his list of schools. After he verbally committed, coach Larry Coker and the University of Miami came calling, but Coker was rebuffed by Mauro’s coach, who informed The U’s head man that Mauro was already taken.
Mauro was on the sidelines last Saturday during NU’s intrasquad scrimmage, so he had an up-close glimpse of NU’s complicated spread offense. But it will take nothing less than an extraordinary effort for him to surpass Bacher, Kafka and Brewer next fall on the depth chart.
“I asked coach Walker if he was planning on me redshirting, and he just said, ‘I want you to come in and compete,'” Mauro says. “So we’ll see – I’m going to be happy with whatever decision is made.”
THE DECISION-MAKERS
As the team prepares for its annual spring game this Saturday, Walker and his staff aren’t worried about naming a starting quarterback. No one will need to know, as Walker is sick of repeating, until Aug. 31, when the Cats open their season at Miami (Ohio).
The quarterback next year, Walker says, will not have to carry the load that Basanez did during his first season, when he aired it out for an average of 220.4 yards per game, tops among all freshmen.
“This current group of competitors for quarterback has a much better surrounding cast than we did four years ago,” Walker says. The team returns every offensive starter except Basanez, receivers Mark Philmore and Jonathan Fields and offensive tackle Zach Strief. “I don’t think whoever plays quarterback will
have to come in and win games for us throwing the ball.”
But if they ever need help, they know where to turn. “They’ll always have my phone number,” Basanez says.
The eminent American essayist Walter Lippmann once said, “The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.” It would appear, then, that the book on Baz’s career is not quite ready to be closed. If his senior campaign is any indication of NU’s ability to develop quarterbacks and of the leadership bequeathed to him by Kustok, then it may not matter which name fills that blank in the quarterback lineage.
“We have three great kids at quarterback,” McGee says. “Forget about their talent, forget about their ability. We have three great kids, and they’re great friends. They work together as a group, so it’s refreshing for me to be around those kids. Our program’s set for a few years at quarterback.”
One gets the feeling “a few years” is ample time to begin a new legend.
Reach Anthony Tao at [email protected].
