The quarterback rivalry is perhaps my favorite recurring storyline in professional football. They’re one of the most vibrant examples of sports entertainment in a league that rose to prominence on pageantry—from NFL Films romantically capturing the game and making it feel titanic, operatic, and artful, to Dick Ebersol’s Vince McMahon-ian vision that drove NBC Sports’ focus on pomp and circumstance and athletes’ personalities.
There’s something mythic about a great QB rivalry that is unmatchable in sports. Like most things that are mythic, it’s mostly artifice—after all, these are ultimately just adults being paid a lot of money to play a kids’ backyard game (albeit at the highest possible level)—and anything portrayed with such dramatic weight is soap opera trickery.