It wasn’t this rough for Steve Jobs when he launched Apple.

And that’s fine with Mike Bercovici, the San Diego Fleet quarterback who, by getting clobbered Saturday night, did a startup football league a huge if unintentional favor.

Pretty much everyone has seen the Bugs Bunny cartoon where the coyote stands in front of a train and gets flattened.

Bercovici was the coyote Saturday.


A 240-pound linebacker was the train.

This was no trivial event, though.

Head trauma has been linked to a degenerative brain disease found in many former football players among others.

Shaan Washington’s direct blow to near his chin area not only flattened Bercovici on the carpeted surface inside the San Antonio Alamodome, it sent his helmet and the football flying.


Bercovici stayed in the game, and said after the Fleet’s practice Wednesday he suffered no concerning effects from the blow.

For the Alliance of American Football, the brutal sack wasn’t scripted but nevertheless was also this:

A piece of football serendipity.

Video of Bercovici getting clobbered put the fledgling league on the U.S. sports map.


The video went viral, while ESPN and other broadcasters gave it a serial airing as well.

This was fine with Bercovici, who made a quip Wednesday about how he not only took one for his squad but the whole eight-team Alliance.

“Hopefully,” said Bercovici, who earned a master’s degree in Business and Sports Law at Arizona State, “that comes back my way years down the road, and maybe there’s a residual check for how much they ran that highlight.”

He added: “Hey, whatever this league needs to get people excited, if that’s what it takes, then I’ll take the bullet.”


The quarterback, who is 6-foot-1/2 and 210, said he had no problem with getting run over, although of course he also said he wishes he had thrown the ball sooner, instead of fixating downfield on first-and-10.

“To me it’s just football,” he said. “That’s just how it is. You get knocked down, you get back up again.”

However, it wasn’t “just football” in the NFL sense because the hit was unflagged.

NFL quarterbacks getting hit as Bercovici did — near the chin, straight on, helmet to face mask — will cause a flag to fly for unnecessary roughness.


Fleet coach Mike Martz, who worked in the NFL from 1992-2011, said Wednesday he believes a flag was warranted under Alliance rules.

“He led with the crown of his helmet,” Martz said of Washington. “You see him drop his helmet, his crown, and he went in with the crown of the helmet, and we all know you can’t do that.”

Leading up to its launch, the Alliance touted the presence of a “Sky Judge” — an additional official with an overhead view — but in addition to the dubious non-flag on the Bercovici hit, the Sky Judge failed to detect a Fleet linebacker stopping San Antonio’s quarterback on third down, some two feet in front of the first-down line (the on-field officials promptly signaled first down).

Officiating is important, even for a developmental league.


Aside from the obvious imperative to protect the players, the Alliance — following the NFL’s lead — wants to make money off wagers on its games.

In comments Wednesday to San Diego radio station 1360-AM, Alliance exec J.K. McKay expressed a different view of the non-flagged blow, saying it was a legal hit.

McKay, the Alliance’s head of operations, said two former NFL officiating supervisors implied no flag was deserved.

It was radio, so one couldn’t see if McKay said this with a straight face.


Commend to your imagination such a frontal helmet to face mask shot against Tom Brady or Philip Rivers, or incoming NFL rookie quarterback Kyler Murray, a highly marketable prospect who stands 5-foot-10 and weighs about 190 pounds.

You’d need a laundry cart to hold all the yellow laundry.

Tom.Krasovic@SDUnionTribune.com; Twitter: SDUTKrasovic