NCAA Football 13 : RG III to grace the cover

By Bryan “Hellisan” Clark - Editor

Robert Griffin III announced on the Dan Patrick Show this morning that he will be the cover athlete for NCAA Football 13. In my opinion you could see this one coming for miles - even if you didn’t have some other type of clue beforehand that he would be the selection.

According to the NFL Draft pick value chart, (used to compare draft picks when trades are made) the number one pick is worth 3,000 points, while the number two pick is worth 2,600 points. However, according to yours truly, the #2 pick is the most valuable selection in the 2012 NFL Draft.

Since Indianapolis has apparently already made its decision internally, whomever trades up to take the #2 pick (most likely scenario in my opinion) will have the most valuable pick since it will be used to select Robert Griffin III. Not only does Griffin III have the skills to be every bit as good as Andrew Luck, he has something that Luck doesn’t have, and that is that he simply exudes cool.

Think about this for a second. Griffin III made Baylor cool for a couple seasons. BAYLOR! How is that even possible?

It’s possible if you not only have the physical talent to put up the numbers and the brains to put the physical talent into action, but also the presence that makes people want to tune in and watch. Watching Griffin III walk down the tunnel in pregame, you can perceive the confident vibe. His cool isn’t an angry cool, or a brooding cool, or a “I act cool because I don’t believe in my personality enough to expose it” cool. It’s more of a 1970′s “I have ugly bellbottoms on and it still looks cool” type of cool confidence.

All of the teams that are most likely to trade up and select Griffin III have a large black populace, so he has that immediate interest thing going for him. But Griffin III is the type of athlete who would appeal to anybody. Watching him banter with the NFL Network cast covering the NFL Combine, and seeing the ease with which he interacts with people and how well spoken he is, it’s easy to see him becoming one of the biggest stars in the history of the NFL.

To come clean here, I do not think that either of the top quarterbacks are a “sure thing.” The shotgun play action stuff that resulted in huge seams and confusion downfield for Robert Griffin III won’t be there in the NFL, at least not more than once in a blue moon. by comparison, Luck is a guy that completed a very small percentage of his passes outside the hashes, unless it was passes in the flats to the fullback or tight end. In effect, I haven’t seen either of these guys do something that screams typical pro-style offense to me. Stanford’s play calling was way too conservative to work in the NFL so I’m not 100% sure why they call it a ‘pro-style’ offense anymore than you’d call Baylor one.

While Luck may be very good (I have some doubts about a guy who literally almost got Chris Owusu killed three separate times), he will likely never have the mass crossover appeal that will potentially be found with Robert Griffin III. Luck is naturally gregarious, but just a tad too goofy to really hit the sweet spot.

Griffin III on the other hand is already making headlines with his selection as the NCAA 13 cover athlete and I can see him marketing anything and everything in the future - as well as putting butts in the seats and eyeballs on televisions.