The Quantum Pontiff

And now, for a totally different kind of post…a post on American football!
Jerry Rice, the greatest wide receiver in football history, announced his retirement from the National Football League today. I grew up watching Jerry Rice play for the super bowl winning San Francisco Forty Niners and he is (probably amusingly to most of you) one of my personal heros. One of my most treasured posessions is a signature of Rice’s (“To Dirty Dave, Peace, Jerry Rice”) on a copy of an article in the Los Angeles times which described some of the research I did while I was an undergraduate at Caltech.
Jerry was the son of a bricklayer, and grew up helping his father lay bricks. One of his brothers would throw bricks up and Jerry would catch them for his father to place. An ominous sign, I suppose, for someone who would go on to catch a thousand five hundred receptions in an NFL career spanning twenty years. During those years, he won three superbowls and claimed almost every single recieving record in the NFL. He is the all time leader in touchdowns (207 versus 2nd best Emmit Smith’s 175), receiving yards (1549 versus 2nd best Cris Carter’s 1101), receiving yards (22895 versus 2nd best Tim Brown’s 14934), and the list goes on and on.
Growing up watching Jerry Rice was a treat which is hard to explain. He and Joe Montana, arguably the greatest quarterback of all time, formed an awesome duo. With Joe and Jerry in the game, one never, ever, thought that the 49ers couldn’t pull out a victory. Montana recorded an astounding 31 come from behind victories in the fourth quarter, with Rice often being a central figure in these amazing comebacks. To this day, I have a hard time not believing that a come from behind isn’t possible, no matter how the ridiculous the score is, in large part due to these two remarkable players. Thinking of Jerry brings back the halcyon days of my youth, when anything was possible, and no obstacle, no matter how seemingly insurmountable, could not be overcome.
Just the other day, I looked up a game which has stuck in my mind all these years later. My friend Luis and I were going camping with his father, and possibly also his brother Isaac. We stopped to get some supplies, listening to the 49er game on the radio. The game appeared to be over, so we turned off the radio. When we got back into the car, we heard the anouncer say “Wersching lines up to kick the winning extra point.” Now Ray Wersching was the 49er’s kicker: somehow the 49ers had come back from absolute disaster and won the game! Here, is, what happened while we were in the store:

The Cincinnati Bengals led the San Francisco 49ers by six points in the closing seconds of a game played at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium on September 20, 1987; faced with a fourth down in their own territory, Bengals head coach Sam Wyche called a running play. The 49ers had no timeouts remaining, and it was Wyche’s belief that this play would successfully run out the clock. However, Wyche overlooked the fact that under NFL rules, the clock is automatically stopped on any play that results in a change of possession – and that is what occurred on this play as the Bengals did not gain enough yardage on it to obtain a first down. There were six seconds remaining when the clock was stopped; the 49ers then took possession of the ball,
and on the ensuing play Joe Montana threw a touchdown pass to Jerry Rice, and the successful extra point attempt that followed gave San Francisco a 27-26 victory.

What I recall reading the next day was that Montana gave Rice a hand signal at the line of scrimage and then threw a long pass to Rice, who made a towering leap and grab in the end zone. The number of similar stories that Jerry and Joe orchastrated is huge, and I could go on and on about these fantastic stories.
But what I will miss most about Jerry Rice is his work ethic. And this is one of the reasons he is among my personal heros. Jerry’s workout ethic is legendary, involving a kind of focus and dedication which may be unrivaled in or outside of sport. Particularly during my years at Caltech, where I was working my butt off, I remember thinking of him as a role model: that talent is important, but hard work and talent are a vicious combo. Whenever I think I might be working hard, I think about Jerry Rice, and think, “sheesh, I’m not working hard at all!” Whatever you may think about sports, one has to say that this kind of role model is hard to come by and for this I will always thank Jerry Rice.