Roman Gabriel, former Rams and Eagles QB, dead at 83 The Rams were my favorite team and he was their quarterback when I first started following pro football. I was about 13. "he still holds the Rams’ team record with 154 touchdown passes."
Roman Gabriel on offense and the Fearsome Foursome on defense...just when I was getting really into football.
Roman Gabriel was fun to watch. Seems to me he set the trend for the prototype QB that followed in the NFL. Big, strong arm and able to sit in the pocket and pick defenses apart. QB’s seemed to get taller after his success. RIP Roman Gabriel.
Roman Gabriel is the only QB of Filipino heritage that I can recall, which is a big deal to us Filipinos who rarely reach six feet tall, much less play NFL football.
Wow, he was my favorite QB, the Rams were my favorite team (fearsome foursome) 1969, I was 10, Gabriel was my hero. RIP big Roman.
Roman Gabriel was Filipino? Wow that comes as a surprise. Honest question: why is being native of the Philippines not spelled Philippino? Inquiring minds want to know
There are competing theories that all might hold some truth. In the 1600s the land was referred to as Las Islas Filipino after King Philip, which was spelled Felipe in Spanish. In the 1800s the name was anglicized as the Philippine Islands. Throughout the country’s history, different parts of the island were dominated by different cultures. The Spanish and the Americans unified the most of these cultures as a single country. One thing in common regardless of whether it was the Spanish, Indonesians, Indians, or Chinese dominating the culture, the letter P and the diphthong Ph was not part of any of their native languages—especially during the period where they were finally converging on a national language. This means you will see the official name of the country as The Philippines in English, Republika ng Pilipinas as the official name in Tagalog or Pilipino or Filipino (yeah… it is confusing), and the people are known as Filipinos or Pinoys. There is no consensus outside the official name of the country. To make matters worse, outside the main island, not everyone actually speaks the official language 100% of the time. The further away you get from Manila the less likely you will hear the official language of Filipino. In one sentence you might hear a mix of Filipino, old Tagalog, and the local dialect or language. Of the 19 officially recognized languages (70+ including the ones not officially recognized), not all are mutually intelligible outside the three or so major groupings. TLDR: The history of the Philippines is complicated and they are still too diverse to unify behind a single language and single spelling of words that makes sense.
Yeah. I was also born in the Philippines to an American father, so I like that aspect. The difference is that both of Tebow’s parents were American so he was registered as an American born abroad. I have one Filipino parent, so I was also registered as an American born abroad with the option to claim either or both. All that to say, it would be a stretch to call Tim Tebow Filipino knowing what I went through in a similar situation.
Hey thanks for the informative reply. All the Filipinos I’ve ever met are cool people. My dad was USAF and stationed at Clark Field in the late 40s. The stories he and my mom told of life there sounded like a whole lot of wild and crazy fun.
No problem. I would generally agree that Filipinos are cool people. If you ever visit what is now the Clark Freeport and Economic Zone or simply “Clark”, everyone is super friendly, the streets are safe, and everything is westernized. Filipino-Americans in America are a mixed bag, so it really depends on upbringing. My dad met my mom at Clark AB in the 1960s. I also had uncles stationed at Clark Field after WW2. Most people would say it was one of the best assignments because there was a lot to do, the language barrier was not too bad, the people were friendly, and everything was cheap (including things we generally do not talk about on a forum).
Less than 5 years after winning WWII didn’t hurt either! They were on top of the world in the late 40s - early 50s
