ASHBURN, Va. -- High on a wall of the basketball court that served as a cafeteria for the coaches and scouts working on the Washington Redskins' draft this weekend was a sign linking a bygone era in club history to what owner Daniel Snyder has not so subtly inculcated as the mindset for the upcoming NFL season.

In white block letters against a maroon-and-gold background, the famous mantra of former Skins coach George Allen lives again: "The Future Is Now."

For the two premier prospects selected by the Redskins on Saturday afternoon -- linebacker LaVar Arrington of Penn State and Alabama offensive tackle Chris Samuels -- that rallying cry rings true. For quarterback Todd Husak, the man who led Stanford to the Rose Bowl last season but wasn't chosen Sunday until 201 names had already been removed from the league's master draft board, the message is little more than a harsh dose of reality.

Like all but one of the dozen quarterbacks taken in this year's draft, eight of them in Sunday's middle and late rounds, the immediate future is such that they would be well counseled to not purchase any green bananas. The only quarterback in the 2000 talent pool ensured a roster spot come September is top prospect Chad Pennington of Marshall, selected in the first round by the New York Jets, and even he faces a lengthy apprenticeship.

In keeping with a current trend disturbed only by the 1999 aberration in which five quarterbacks were chosen among the first 12 overall picks, NFL personnel directors attached a "low priority" sticker to the game's most significant position this year. Just three quarterbacks were chosen in the first three rounds, the lowest first-day complement since 1996 and the second-lowest since the NFL adopted the seven-round draft in '94.

For the remaining quarterbacks, Saturday was a sleepless night and Sunday afternoon was mostly another source of irritation and self-doubt.

"I had heard all the horror stories," said Husak, drafted in the sixth round. "And I guess I learned today that they're all true. In fact, it was probably worse than people told me it would be."

More than any other position, the quarterback spot has evolved into one in which only the "can't miss" prospects need schedule draft parties. Unless a quarterback is universally admired by scouts and personnel directors, the caterer is apt to have long since departed by the time he receives a celebratory phone call from some team functionary.

In fact, at Kinlaw's Barber Shop in tiny Alvin, S.C., where the friends and family members of Joe Hamilton had gathered around one of the few big-screen televisions in a burg so small it doesn't even have its own ZIP code, all the jugs of sweet tea were empty and the barbecue was cold by the time the former Georgia Tech star was selected by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers just 20 picks shy of the end of the draft.

The runner-up for the Heisman Trophy last winter could have invented something called the Low Man Award four months later.

Regarded by scouts as a terrific playmaker in college, but two inches short of possibly being a first-round pick in the pros, Hamilton was the final quarterback drafted this year. The good folks of Alvin, who began the draft toasting native son Courtney Brown, the defensive end from Penn State who was the first overall player selected on Saturday, had a long wait between hurrahs.

For no one, however, was the wait longer than for Hamilton, whose agent received four phone calls from the Atlanta Falcons in the seventh round alone, inquiring about whether Hamilton would be interested in signing with the team as an undrafted free agent. Thankfully, the classy Hamilton never had to make that decision.

"When that phone finally rang and I heard the voice on the other end saying that it was the Bucs calling, it was like the weight of the world went off my shoulders," said Hamilton. "Before that, people would be calling and asking stuff like, 'Man, what's going on?' Let me tell you, that got old real fast. If Tampa Bay hadn't called, I don't know what I would have done."

At the home of former Tennessee quarterback Tee Martin, a player good enough to have led his team to a national championship only two years ago, the waiting didn't end until the fifth round was all but expended. The man who owns a national title ring couldn't get the phone to ring, and to suggest his ordeal was high anxiety would be understatement.

But for former college standout quarterbacks such as Doug Johnson (Florida), Kevin Thompson (Penn State), Bill Burke (Michigan State), Kevin Feterik (Brigham Young), and Jamie Barnette (North Carolina State), the call never came. Those players will probably find work in some NFL camp as a "hired arm" this summer, but their security is nonexistent.

Even as the highest-rated player at the position, Pennington was forced to cool his heels until after the halfway point of the opening round, when the Jets chose him with the 18th choice. It marked the latest that the top quarterback went off the board since 1997, when San Francisco didn't select Jim Druckenmiller until the 26th overall choice.

In the two drafts before this one, quarterbacks were the first players taken, Tim Couch by the Browns in 1999 and Peyton Manning by Indianapolis in '98. But even in '98, with Manning and Ryan Leaf going 1-2 in the entire draft, there were just eight quarterbacks selected, and it seems now that most lotteries will include no more than 10-12 players at the position. Since the draft was scaled back to seven rounds in '94, there have been an average of 11.3 quarterbacks taken.

There were more quarterbacks taken in the first round of the 1999 draft than there were in the first five rounds this year. Of the 12 quarterbacks selected this weekend, eight were chosen in either the sixth or seventh round. The flurry came in the sixth round, when six passers went off the board, including JaJuan Seider of Florida A&M (to San Diego), a player most clubs did not even have on their draft boards.

His selection reinforced the notion that, in a draft where subjectivity was rampant, it totally ruled where quarterbacks were considered.

On the Washington board, for instance, Husak was the second-rated quarterback behind only Pennington. But just phoning around the league quickly on Sunday night, SportsLine.com could find only one other team that had the Stanford star in the top five prospects from among the nine clubs surveyed. Baltimore, on the other hand, had Chris Redman of Louisville rated as its No. 2 quarterback prospect and chose him in the third round. But of the nine teams surveyed, just two others had Redman that high on the board.

"Apparently the way you play in college just doesn't matter anymore," said Martin, the bitterness unmistakable in his voice. "You can be a winner, put up big numbers, but the scouts just see what they want to see, you know?"

Martin is much closer to the truth than he probably realizes. The quarterback position has become one of very personal preference, coaches evaluating players on how they will fit into a system and how quickly. And like every other position, it is also affected by individual team needs. For all of the rhetoric about the dearth of solid young quarterbacks in the league, the truth of the matter is that few teams currently have situations into which a rookie can compete for even the No. 2 spot.

Todd Husak will be stuck as Washington's third-string quarterback, behind Brad Johnson and Jeff George. (AP)

That is, in part at least, a byproduct of an NFL free-agency system that annually features a kind of quarterback carousel. Every spring, it seems, teams can pick over a list of 10 veteran passers with good resumes and plenty of travel stickers on the luggage. That a former starter such as Jeff George is on the roster of the Redskins as a backup is "Exhibit A" in this game of musical chairs. The paucity of draft prospects prepared for the NFL only exacerbates the problem.

"What happens now," said Redskins coach Norv Turner, "is that a team picks out a guy it likes in the scouting process and then makes a judgment on where it can get that guy in the draft. It has become very (subjective) in that regard. What one team likes, another one may not like at all. But I think, for the position in general, teams are reluctant to draft a player too high if he is going to sit for several years. So you target a place to take him and hope he is still around when you reach that point in the draft."

Two weeks ago, the San Francisco 49ers offensive brain trust concluded a workout with Hofstra quarterback Gio Carmazzi in Sacramento, returned to the team's "war room" and immediately penciled in his name for the sixth spot in their draft. Had he been drafted by another franchise by that point in the third round, the 49ers would have moved on to someone else, but with a sense of profound disappointment.

"You gamble some and hope you have your board assembled the right way," said San Francisco general manager Bill Walsh, who feels Carmazzi could be the 49ers' starter in a couple years. "That's all you can do."

There might be no such lofty expectations for Husak, who is no better than No. 3 on the Redskins' depth chart, behind starter Brad Johnson and George. Even if the team soon releases itinerant backups Rodney Peete and Casey Weldon, a move that could occur as early as Monday, Husak is not going to get many snaps his rookie season. If any.

The fact he graduated three weeks ago with a degree in political science should come in handy for Husak, particularly playing in the nation's capital. A big-time playmaker in college, and the most responsible for helping Stanford overcome a shaky defense to claim the Pac-10 crown, he harbors no illusions and demonstrated political correctness Sunday evening as he addressed the reality of his situation.

"The bad thing," Husak said, "is that this whole process lasted so long. The good thing is that it at least ended with me getting drafted by a team that liked me more than all the other guys that they could realistically have taken."