An impressive athletic debut

Ever since this kid named Stephen Strasburg had 14 strikeouts and got the win in his major league pitching debut I've been thinking about athletes who have made an instant impression on their sport. It reminded me of the following story, which may be the single most impressive athletic debut in the history of football.

It was the fall of 1977, and a junior at Muscatine High School was about to make his first start at quarterback for the varsity football team. His name: Mark Rohde (that would be our dad).

Dad's favorite play to run was something known as a "pop-pass." When the offense runs a pop-pass, the quarterback takes the snap and immediately dumps a pass over the middle to his tight end who is running a quick slant pattern. Unfortunately for my dad (and the entire Muscatine Muskies football team), things didn't go quite as planned.

The pop-pass was called. Dad took the snap from the center, stood up, and dumped the pass right to where the tight end was supposed to be. But the tight end wasn't there. He had been knocked on his butt by the defensive end. Instead, dad's pass went right into the arms of the linebacker, who returned the pass for a touchdown the other way.

But that, of course, is not the end of the story. Throwing an interception that's returned for a touchdown doesn't make for a great debut, but it's certainly not one of history's most impressive.

A short time later, when the Muskies were back on offense, the play was called again. Again the tight end got knocked on his butt. Again dad fired the pass to what would have been the right place. Again the linebacker caught it, and again he ran it back for a touchdown. Ok, so TWO interceptions returned for touchdowns.

Then it happened again. Exact same play. Exact same outcome. The Muskies were down by three touchdowns, and it was still the first half.

But we're not done yet.

After the third interception return for a touchdown the Muscatine coach thought he better take his young starter out of the game. So he did. Smart move? Perhaps.

Time was winding down in the 1st half, and Muscatine desperately needed to get on the board. So they called a half-back pass play. This is where the running back gets the ball as if it's a run play, but then he stops and makes a throw downfield where, hopefully, the defense has abandoned the receiver because they thought they needed to go after the running back. But with a half-back pass, you usually need a running back who has some ability to throw the football. So the coach put dad in at the running back position.

The quarterback took the snap and pitched it back to dad, who stopped and made his throw downfield. The throw got intercepted. And returned it for a touchdown.

At halftime the score stood Muskies 0, Bad Guys 28. Dad likes to brag that in his first varsity start he threw four touchdown passes in the first half... and that's technically a true statement. Unfortunately, they were all to the other team. Woops.

Epilogue: Believe it or not, dad went on to be a fairly successful high school quarterback. His senior year he led the Muskies to a winning record -- something they wouldn't achieve again for almost 20 years.