The first time I met Jack Scarbath, it was my first year on the radio at the University of Maryland, the year was 1979. I knew who Jack was, of course, because of his stature as a legendary quarterback.
I was in high school in Miami in the early 1950s, when Jack was playing at the University of Maryland. The thing that caught my eye when I was in high school was that we both ran the Split-T offense. So the first time I met him, I said, ‘Hello, Mr. Scarbath,’ he immediately told me to stop and said ‘It’s Jack, Mr. Scarbath was my father.” It started a friendship of more than 40 years.
In that first meeting, after getting over the initial shock of the size of his hand – it was twice as large as mine – when I shook his hand, I made a point of telling Jack that I was a Split-T quarterback just like him. I quipped to him, you were runner-up for the Heisman Trophy, and I did pretty well in my high school career as a quarterback as well – we had a perfect record – perfectly winless at 0-10 – with me as the quarterback.
Jack asked me if I ever got hurt playing quarterback, and I said ‘yes, every year.’ He said, that’s to be expected, you are 5-8, then I told him I weighed just 135 pounds. Jack then followed that by telling me to not feel bad because even at 6-2 and 190 pounds, he got hurt a lot as well.
Jack said, ‘you might have gotten hurt a lot, but you never gave up, right?’ I said ‘no, I never gave up,’ and Jack followed up, ‘and you thought you were pretty good?’ I said, ‘yes, I thought I was pretty good, but our record proved that I wasn’t that good of a quarterback.’ To that, Jack’s response was, ‘but you had fun, didn’t you?’ I told him, yes, I had a lot of fun and as I was telling him, I noticed the way he was talking to me, he was trying to make me feel good – and I was a bad quarterback. That really set the tone for our relationship – he was always gracious and humble – as we became the closest of friends.
