The clock is certainly ticking on all of us and, when someone remembers the good works we did as youngsters, it means a lot.
When I was a kid, Doug Shobert was my favorite quarterback.
I remember Shobert well.
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| Lance Johnstone as an Owl. |
Shobert was Wayne Hardin's first quarterback at Temple and he will be inducted into the school's athletic Hall of Fame on Saturday with the other football inductee, Lance Johnstone.
I blacked out during Johnstone's years because the Owls never won more than two games in any of them but I also remember Johnstone as a tough player who did the Owls proud. I don't remember Lance as I do Doug, primarily because the Owls won in the Shobert days pretty much all the time.
Lance, though, did something Doug didn't do: Have a career in the NFL.
Lance, though, broke Steve Conjar's record for tackles in a season with 288 and Conjar was a helluva player.
Ironically enough, Shobert broke the record for completion percentage in the North-South game set by another high-profile Hardin quarterback, a guy named Roger "The Dodger" Staubach.
So Shobert was taught well.
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| Homecoming weather should be great. |
Later, as a sports writer in Doylestown, I covered some of Shobert's Quakertown teams. Shobert went on on a high note in 1987, with an 8-3-1 season, as head coach of the Panthers (I still think Quakertown should be named the Quakers). After dealing with him professionally, I can truly say that Doug was/is as great a person as he was a quarterback.
His wife at the time, Cookie Shobert, was a reporter for the Quakertown Free Press.
At the other end of our coverage area at the time, in Upper Moreland, I also dealt with Joe Injaychock, who was head coach there. Injaychock started at cornerback on the same teams Shobert played for at Temple. I don't think Joe is going to make the Temple Hall of Fame, but he was a good high school football coach and part of a terrific cornerback tandem with Joe Cioffi.
A lot of good football minds came out of those teams and they owe the education to Hardin, the greatest football mind of all.
On Saturday, remain in the stands at halftime and give both Shobert and Johnstone a rousing ovation.
Tomorrow Fast Forward Friday: Biggest Temple game this century?
