Trivia

The hot dog guy shorted him 25 cents, so he chased him down to get his quarter back?

Bear Bryant invented it! Next?

same reason the FULLback is in front of the HALFback

I learned @ Bengal Belle 101 that the quarterback is 1/4th of the way back and therefore called QB. Also applies for the Halfback and Fullback.

DancinTiger here is the old formation used in early football that was outlawed:

.........C
........XXX
.......XXFXX
.......X...X

That is the flying wing.

When they made the rule of 7 men on the line, everyone started to run this formation:

.....EXXCXXE
............W (lines up on strong right or left)
.......RFL

That is the formation used to throw the Fullback over the line, it was outlawed and that is when you get a QB and the first formations are like this:

.....EXXCXXE
............
......RFQL

very close to a T formation, in this line up the ball went to any of the backs from center, then you have the T, a single wing and box all coming out around 1905-06:

......EXXCXXE
.........Q
........RFL

Thats the T which was upgraded many times over the next 25 years.

Single wing:
.....EXXCXXE
..........Q.W
.......T.B

Pop Warner came up with the single wing.

The Box:

.....EXXCXXE
.......Q.F
.......R.L

this is the formation Notre Dame's Knute Rockne later changed to what is call the Notre Dame shift around the late 10's (1917-18).

Also like I posted above you have Wingard's stack formation we used in 1907-08-09 and 1910:

...EXXCXXE
....R..<
....L
....F

Notice in all the early formations the Quarterback isn't in what looks alike an I or pro I formation, so the the so called 1/4 the way back is a quess by a bad poster on Wik. is wrong.

Also many formations didn't have a QB in early football it was called the Wingback, Blocking back, etc.