The job of “backup quarterback” has long been considered one of the best professions in professional sports.
The best backups don’t play at all, watching the game and the world go by from behind a clipboard and a coach’s headset. They collect the prestige and cache of being a member of the squad without, y’know, risking their long-term physical health to play each week. In many ways, being a backup QB is a lot like being Vice President: mostly ceremonial but unquestionably essential — a heartbeat away from The Big Job.
And yet no backup QB, not even the wealthiest of NFL journeyman, can claim to have lived a life of luxury quite like Georgia Tech’s Colson Brown. That’s because this week Brown isn’t just a backup QB, he’s a backup QB playing in a Div. 1 college golf tournament … at Cypress Point.
The story comes to us courtesy of Ryan Frazer of Agora Golf, who found out about Colson’s recent flirtation with sporting greatness. As Frazer tells it, Brown — a freshman backup QB on the Georgia Tech football team and former high school golfer in North Augusta, S.C. — was called up to join the GT golf team on a last-second basis.
Apparently, the Yellow Jackets’ golf team was double-booked: owing starting times for 6 players at both the East Lake Cup in Georgia and the Cypress Point Classic in Northern California. After divvying up the 11-player squad between the East Lake Cup (a Golf Channel-televised, high-level collegiate event) and the Cypress Point Classic (unquestionably epic but slightly less prestigious), the Jackets still needed another body to ship out West. Enter Brown.
Suddenly, just hours after the Yellow Jackets’ stunning win over North Carolina on Saturday night, Brown found himself on a flight out to Monterrey Peninsula, where he would collect the second W of his weekend: the opportunity to compete in a Walker Cup-style tournament hosted by Stanford University at … oh, just one of the most exclusive clubs in the world.
Day 1 went about as expected for a QB competing against some of the best collegiate golfers in the world. In the morning’s foursomes sessions, Brown lost 4-and-3 to a University of Texas pairing including 6-foot-8 phenom Tommy Morrison. In the afternoon’s fourball sessions, he lost 2-and-1 to the Auburn Tigers. On Day 2, he will have the opportunity to start off the action for the Yellow Jackets, competing in the first of six singles matches against Illinois’ Piercen Hunt.
Of course, nobody would blame Brown if he leaves Cypress point 0-3-0 for his efforts. He is, after all, merely filling in as the 12th man in his secondary college sport. But hardly anyone would feel badly for him either, not after he earned three consecutive tee times at the No. 2 course on GOLF’s latest list of the Top 100 in the World.
