FODDER: Can Kaepernick make it in the NFL?

Sports fodder for a Friday morning . . . Lost in all of the Colin Kaepernick NFL draft discussion the last three months is whether or not Kaepernick can do what no Nevada Wolf Pack quarterback before him has ever done. Can he be a success in the NFL? Just three Wolf Pack quarterbacks have ever thrown a pass in the NFL: Stan Heath, Bill Mackrides and Pat Brady. All of them played at least six decades ago. Wolf Pack coach Chris Ault has had only one other quarterback (Jeff Rowe) get drafted in his 26 years. So Nevada isn't exactly Quarterback U when it comes to the NFL. Kaepernick, though, has already done a couple dozen or so things that no Wolf Pack quarterback has ever done before him. One more won't be a problem.

•••

The one Wolf Pack quarterback who could have been a very productive player in the NFL but never really got a fair shake was John Dutton. Dutton, who played at Nevada in 1996 and 1997, had a big arm, big heart and a mental and physical toughness. The Miami Dolphins, looking for Dan Marino's eventual replacement (they are still looking), drafted Dutton in the sixth round in 1998. The Dolphins, though, never gave Dutton a real opportunity to make the roster. Dutton went on to become one of the greatest quarterbacks in Arena League history. For quarterbacks, it's all about being in the right place at the right time. Kaepernick won't know if he's in the right spot until he gets to training camp.

•••

The best five players in this year's draft? None of them were quarterbacks, despite all of the hype you've been reading over recent months. The five guys who will have the best NFL careers out of this year's draft are Patrick Peterson, Marcell Dareus, Von Miller, A.J. Green and Nick Fairley. The best quarterback in this draft should have been Andrew Luck, who is getting ready for his senior year at Stanford.

•••

The Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl has already extended an invitation to BYU to play in this year's game on Dec. 30 at SMU. That is yet another piece of evidence to suggest that idiots run these bowl games. When BYU chooses to go to another bowl game (and they will), how will the Armed Forces Bowl people hide the fact that one of their teams will be their second choice?

•••

Members of the NCAA's bowl licensing committee are being accused of accepting gifts from the Fiesta Bowl, an act that NCAA president Mark Emmert says is "not acceptable and completely contrary to the values of college athletics." Interesting. It's OK for the bowl game sponsors to give hundreds and thousands of dollars of free gifts to players and university personnel at all of these bowl games but not OK to give it to the licensing committee? Didn't the Fiesta Bowl folks give Emmert his swag bag?

•••

Keith Smart coaches the Golden State Warriors to a 10-game improvement over the previous year with a lineup that wouldn't win the Pac-10 and he gets fired? It's no wonder why guys like Tom Izzo would rather coach in college. Smart did a solid job with that dysfunctional Warriors roster this season. He deserved at least a second season as head coach.

•••

The only thing longer and more drawn out than the NHL and NBA playoffs is the NFL Draft. We get three solid months of analysis, college all star games, combine workouts, 40-yard dash times, pro days, mock drafts, hype and useless information and when the draft finally gets here, it takes them three days to do seven rounds. If a dozen drunk guys can go through 26 rounds of a baseball fantasy draft in less than four hours, why can't the NFL conduct a seven-round draft in one day? Then again, maybe the NFL Draft isn't so bad. We did, after all, have to wait six weeks for the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl.