John Carl Scarbath (August 12, 1930December 6, 2020) was a professional

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wit ...

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ma ...

(NFL) for the

Washington Redskins The Washington Commanders are a professional American football team based in the Washington metropolitan area. The Commanders compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) ...

and

Pittsburgh Steelers The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh. The Steelers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) North division. Founded in , the Stee ...

. He was inducted into the

College Football Hall of Fame The College Football Hall of Fame is a hall of fame and interactive attraction devoted to college football. The National Football Foundation (NFF) founded the Hall in 1951 to immortalize the players and coaches of college football that were v ...

in 1983.

Early life

Scarbath was born in the Hamilton section of

Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

, on August 12, 1930 and attended high school at the

Baltimore Polytechnic Institute The Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, colloquially referred to as BPI, Poly, and The Institute, is a U.S. public high school founded in 1883. Established as an all-male manual trade / vocational school by the Baltimore City Council and the Bal ...

. He played football as a

and basketball as a guard. At Poly, Scarbath came to the attention of former

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; ...

coach and then university president

Harry C. Byrd Harry Clifton "Curley" Byrd (February 12, 1889 – October 2, 1970) was an American university administrator, educator, athlete, coach, and politician. Byrd began a long association with the University of Maryland as an undergraduate in 1905, and ...

, who offered him a full

athletic scholarship An athletic scholarship is a form of scholarship to attend a college or university or a private high school awarded to an individual based predominantly on his or her ability to play in a sport. Athletic scholarships are common in the United Stat ...

College career

As a freshman at the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the Flagship un ...

, Scarbath poured cement as a construction worker in the building of the school's

Byrd Stadium SECU Stadium is an outdoor athletic stadium on the campus of the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland. It is the home of Maryland Terrapins football and men's lacrosse teams, which compete in the Big Ten Conference. The facility was ...

. He later worked at a

foundry A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals ...

, which also helped to keep him in shape for football.Jessica Bizik
Good Sports Then and Now; Idol Time: Jack Scarbath '54
, ''College Park Online'', University of Maryland, Summer 1997, retrieved May 28, 2010. Jack Scarbath pose

The Maryland Terps compiled a 24-4-1 record with Scarbath as quarterback and defeated

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to ...

in the 1951

Sugar Bowl The Sugar Bowl is an annual American college football bowl game played in New Orleans, Louisiana. Played annually since January 1, 1935, it is tied with the Orange Bowl and Sun Bowl as the second-oldest bowl games in the country, surpassed on ...

. In 1952, he was unanimously selected to the

All-America The All-America designation is an annual honor bestowed upon an amateur sports person from the United States who is considered to be one of the best amateurs in their sport. Individuals receiving this distinction are typically added to an All-Am ...

first-team and finished as the runner-up in votes for the Heisman Trophy. Scarbath was also

Southern Conference The Southern Conference (SoCon) is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) NCAA Division I, Division I. Southern Conference College football, football teams c ...

Player of the Year and the South's

Most Valuable Player In team sports, a most valuable player award, abbreviated 'MVP award', is an honor typically bestowed upon an individual (or individuals, in the instance of a tie) whose individual performance is the greatest in an entire league, for a particu ...

in the

North–South Shrine Game The North–South Shrine Game was an annual postseason college football all-star game played each December from 1948 to 1973 in Miami, and a final time in 1976 in Pontiac, Michigan. The game was sponsored by the fraternal group Shriners Interna ...

. He played

lacrosse Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensi ...

for

during the 1952 season. Scarbath graduated from Maryland in 1954 with an

industrial engineering Industrial engineering is an engineering profession that is concerned with the optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information an ...

degree.

Professional career

The

selected Scarbath in the first round of the

1953 NFL Draft The 1953 National Football League Draft was held on January 22, 1953, at Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the ...

as the third overall pick. He played with Washington from 1953 to 1954. In 1955, Scarbath played in the

Canadian Football League The Canadian Football League (CFL; french: Ligue canadienne de football—LCF) is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a ...

for the

Ottawa Rough Riders The Ottawa Rough Riders were a Canadian Football League team based in Ottawa, Ontario, founded in 1876. Formerly one of the oldest and longest-lived professional sports teams in North America, the Rough Riders won the Grey Cup championship nine ...

. He returned to the NFL to play for the

1956 Events January * January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan. * January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming, are kille ...

, his final season in the NFL. After leaving the NFL, Scarbath served as an assistant coach for the University of South Carolina for the next five years.

Later life and awards

Scarbath founded and served as the

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especial ...

of his own business, John C. Scarbath and Sons abrasives company, which he sold in 1995. He then worked with the Maryland Education Foundation to provide college scholarships to prospective scholar-athletes. The

inducted Scarbath in 1983, and the

University of Maryland Athletic Hall of Fame The University of Maryland Athletic Hall of Fame was established in 1982 by the M Club Foundation to honor student-athletes, coaches, and administrators who made significant contributions to athletics at the University of Maryland. The Hall of F ...

inducted him in 1984.University of Maryland Athletic Hall of Fame: All-Time Inductees
, University of Maryland, retrieved June 12, 2009. Scarbath died of heart failure on December 6, 2020, at 90 years of age.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Scarbath, Jack 1930 births 2020 deaths American industrial engineers American manufacturing businesspeople American football quarterbacks Maryland Terrapins baseball players Maryland Terrapins football players Maryland Terrapins men's lacrosse players Ottawa Rough Riders players South Carolina Gamecocks football coaches Pittsburgh Steelers players Washington Redskins players All-American college football players College Football Hall of Fame inductees Baltimore Polytechnic Institute alumni Baseball players from Baltimore Lacrosse players from Baltimore Players of American football from Baltimore People from Rising Sun, Maryland