Ryan Brenner was out because of a knee injury late in the year when a fellow freshman took his junior varsity place at Isidore Newman in New Orleans, where they take their quarterbacking very seriously. His 130-pound replacement, Odell Beckham Jr., was throwing tight spirals and making enough of the breakaway runs Peyton and Eli Manning never made at Newman to compel the JV coach to give Brenner this warning:
"Odell is about to Wally Pipp you."
Brenner had never heard of Pipp, or the story of how he lost his New York Yankees job to Lou Gehrig, and it didn't much matter.