Rookies Under Siege

Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf were big stars in college, but it's another story in the NFL

It is going to sound as if the great football prophet John Madden is talking about mathematics, but he isn't. He is talking about a subject of far greater interest to the American public--why so many quarterbacks, including a couple of hotshot college studs whose rookie National Football League contracts add up to roughly $75 million, look like your grandmother out there.

"You remember how, back in school, some kids got geometry?" Madden asks. "You worked at it, worked at it, worked at it, BOOM! You finally got it! And if you got geometry, you remember how then you went on...

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