Taulia Tagovailoa is now the Big Ten’s all-time leading passer.
Except, maybe, he’s not?
It went particularly unnoticed this past weekend, but a Purdue spokesperson noted that apparently there is some discrepancy about which number is Drew Brees’ actual career total because bowl games didn’t count but now do — which would make you think that the Big Ten should retroactively count Brees’ bowl totals, too?
An entity as significant as the Big Ten not dotting its i’s and crossing its t’s regarding this record is a weird thing. Purdue recognizes Brees as having thrown for 11,792 yards in his career. That seems right and would mean he is still the all-time leader unless Tagovailoa throws for 537 yards in a bowl game.
Does this bookkeeping issue possibly have anything to do with why Tagovailoa has chosen to play in the team’s upcoming bowl game instead of preparing for the NFL Draft? We know Tagovailoa is a true competitor, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he would choose to play in the bowl game even if there were no debate about this. But is it possible it’s a factor?
Also, I know we live in a society where nothing matters and our greatest export is gaslighting, but holy hell. Something like half of all college football teams (author’s note: numbers might not be exact) are going to play in the Big Ten and yet no one knows which quarterback has thrown for the most career yards in history and we’ve just decided to announce that someone has broken a record even if there’s evidence that suggests that … isn’t remotely accurate?
This is what you get when you hire George Santos to run your recordkeeping, I guess.
The point of this column wasn’t necessarily to disparage the Big Ten for its shoddy recordkeeping — although that seems well-earned! The point was to address a topic I like to use as a talk show host. “How do we talk to our kids about __” is a trope I use regularly to try to discuss topics that require an amount of nuance. So how do we talk to our kids about the legacy of Taulia Tagovailoa at Maryland?
I saw a strange amount of Maryland-adjacent Twitter personalities using some form of “best quarterback in Maryland history” when discussing Tagovailoa in recent weeks. It’s a perplexing thing. Someone who makes the argument (and I had a few Maryland fans attempt to in discussions with me) can merely point to the numbers. They would argue that because Tagovailoa is statistically the most prolific quarterback in school history, that’s enough to also say he’s the “best.”
Of course, the two quarterbacks we are to believe Tagovailoa passed to claim the top spot* on the league’s all-time passing list are (checks notes) Purdue’s Curtis Painter and Minnesota’s Adam Weber, and I can count on zero fingers the number of times I have heard someone suggest those players as the greatest quarterbacks in the history of the conference. Numbers don’t always tell the full story. Not every completion is made equal. An 80-yard drive in the fourth quarter while trailing by four scores still counts statistically, but we know that should read more like “counts.”
(*Won’t someone think of the internet columnists that have to try to write about this topic and get to the bottom of this already?)
The other interesting argument I heard from those who were defending the idea of Tagovailoa being the best signal-caller in school history was that because there were so few good arguments to be made for anyone else, the title should default to Tagovailoa simply because he was the most statistically prolific.
To be clear, I disagree. And I disagree strongly. Comparing eras within football (particularly collegiately) is essentially impossible. But to have an “all-time” conversation, you have to be willing to view a player within the context of the era he competed in and the competition he competed against.
Jack Scarbath did not play in an era of prolific passing (or offense, frankly). But we know that he was a first-team All-American and the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy in 1952. His 24-4-1 record in college included an undefeated 1951 season with a win against No. 1 Tennessee in the Sugar Bowl that only isn’t recognized as a national championship because, at the time, final rankings were released before bowl games were played. (Which still somehow makes more sense than the Big Ten maybe announcing the wrong player as the conference’s all-time passing leader.)
We also know that Boomer Esiason was a two-time All-American who guided Maryland to an ACC title in 1983. These are very good arguments! They’re much better arguments than a player who, no matter how many yards he threw for, never recorded any sort of significant (or buzzword “signature”) win during this career.
Which I don’t say to try to minimize Tagovailoa, either. Maryland folks might well roll their eyes about the premise of this column because they’ll read it as demeaning to Tagovailoa. I hate that. In fact, I would argue that blindly suggesting Tagovailoa as being the greatest quarterback in school history because of his statistics is demeaning as well. It wanders into hyperbole without fairly telling the young man’s story.
And that story is significant. Maryland football was staring up at irrelevance at the time Tagovailoa arrived. As in, they were irrelevant BEFORE Jordan McNair died. To be clear, nothing that happens from a football standpoint will ever change the horror and failure of that moment. But football would continue at Maryland, and in the aftermath of that and other awful things we learned about DJ Durkin’s tenure, it felt as though relevance might never be reached.
When Tagovailoa chose to rejoin his former offensive coordinator, he brought an amount of hope with him. He faced the heavy burden of the depths of Maryland football’s irrelevance AND being measured against his famous brother. He did so admirably. He never took Maryland to prominence, but he guided the program out of unfathomable irrelevance to a place of at least respectability.
We cannot discuss Taulia Tagovailoa without being clear about how he has left Maryland much better than he found it. That matters significantly. The failure to take the next step is probably more related to the program’s play up front than anything else. He had flaws. But he also stood toe to toe with Ohio State and Michigan multiple times, won multiple bowl games against ACC competition — with a chance to add another bowl victory still — and posted a win at Penn State (that I fully understand if you’ve forgotten).
Taulia Tagovailoa’s place in Maryland football history is extremely important. There is a foundation that can be built upon if Maryland can find more high-level quarterback play moving forward. Tagovailoa represented stability for a program that had so little during the last couple of decades. He righted a ship that wasn’t just in trouble, it was essentially sunk.
He’s not the greatest quarterback in Maryland history. He may not be the most prolific passer in Big Ten history. But he’s been an incredibly important figure for this program whose efforts should not soon be forgotten.
Photo Credit: Kenya Allen/PressBox