John Elway: The Drive of a Champion
November 16, 1981THE PHOENIX OF PALO ALTOBy Ron FimriteA marvelous paradox of this football season is that the college quarterback most prized by the pros plays for a team with one of the most god-awful records in the country. The quarterback is John Elway, and he throws bullet passes with cross-hair accuracy. The team is Stanford, which has been beaten [seven times]....Last Saturday's 63-9 victory over Oregon was only the second of the year for Stanford; on Oct. 10 the Cardinal squeaked by UCLA 26-23. Nevertheless, despite such massive insult and occasional injury -- Elway has been bothered by a sprained right ankle, a chipped bone in his left hand and a mild concussion -- the embattled young man has made the pros covet him all the more. In this hellish season he has thrown the ball 309 times and completed 175 passes for a .566 percentage and 2,202 yards. Fifteen of his passes have gone for touchdowns. That performance, following a...season in which he completed 65.4% of 379 passes for 2,889 yards and 27 touchdowns [and became one of the handful of sophomore quarterbacks ever named All-America], has put him near the top of the quarterback heap at a school renowned for its passers....From the neck up, Elway...could be Andy Hardy, or Jody Baxter inThe Yearling.His hair falls like straw over an unlined forehead. His blue eyes are clear and his mouth, thick-lipped, is filled with alabaster teeth. That's the head. The rest of him is pure pro quarterback -- lanky (6'4", 202), long-limbed, the chest of a weightlifter. Watching him fire his passes, reading about his record-shattering performances, one is likely to forget that this superman is, at 21, still a boy..."I've learned a lot this year," Elway, ever cheerful, says. "You learn more from losing, I think....It's a new situation for me -- losing. It demonstrates how much the quarterback depends on the people around him...."Stanford's dismal showing has in no way cooled the ardor professional scouts feel for the quarterback. "I've been in this business 20 years, and I'd have to say that Elway is the best I've ever seen," says Tony Razzano, director of college scouting for the 49ers...."And sometimes when a player doesn't seem to have the accompaniment he might, you can't let it bother you that they're 2-7...."The first week he stepped on a practice field as a freshman in 1979, Elway scared off two top quarterback prospects, Babe Laufenberg and Grayson Rogers, who quickly transferred to other schools...where both have started at quarterback. Turk Schonert, a senior then, now with the Cincinnati Bengals, who had patiently waited his turn through the Guy Benjamin (49ers) and Steve Dils (Vikings) eras, was almost equally threatened by the freshman flamethrower. "Turk felt the pressure, no question," says [Stanford offensive coordinator Jim] Fassel. Schonert merely led the nation in passing that year. He almost had to in order to stave off Elway. "If you can play ahead of John Elway," says Fassel, "you're a great quarterback, and I don't care if you are a senior and he is only a freshman."Andre Tyler, a brilliant Stanford split end...[says], "...most quarterbacks would not be physically able to even think about doing what Elway does routinely. You can be surrounded by defenders, and John will get the ball to you....He throws so hard that it was a problem for us receivers at first....For a while the coaches debated whether to ask him to soften up. Finally they came to us and said, 'We're not going to ask John to change. It's up to you to adjust. He's our man....'"With NFL scouts forming entire rooting sections and with big bucks being squirreled away to entice him, what could keep Elway from playing pro football? The New York Yankees could. The Yankees signed Elway to a...contract [to play for their Class-A Oneonta (N.Y) team next summer]....For a youngster who spends most of his time throwing footballs, Elway is a remarkable baseball player....This past spring he hit .361 with nine homers and 50 RBIs in 49 games. In the NCAA Central Regionals he hit .444 and was voted onto the all-tournament team....A lefthanded hitter with power, "Elway is made for Yankee Stadium," says Bill Bergesch, Yankee vice-president for baseball operations. "We project him as a superstar. He's...big and strong, he can run, he can hit and hit with power, and he's got that strong arm. We see him as our rightfielder down the road. Unfortunately, we are also aware that he has some talent in football...."Elway's negotiator in his dealings with the Yankees and his closest confidant in all things is his father, Jack, 50. Theirs is a...relationship abounding in mutual respect and admiration. It is a relationship marred, however, by an accident of fate: Jack Elway is the head football coach at San Jose State...a traditional Stanford football opponent. The annual meetings between the...teams are an excruciatingly painful experience for the entire Elway family, which includes wife-mother Janet and daughters-sisters Lee Ann and Jana [John's twin]...."I tell people that my [recruiting] offer to John was $2,000 under the table, a new car and a mortgage on the house," [says Jack]. "I said I would go so far as to have an affair with his mother. Still, he didn't go for it....I know that if I had said, 'John, come with me to San Jose,' he would've come, but that wouldn't have been fair to him. Still there are nights...when I'll say to myself, Jack, old boy, you've got to be the dumbest sumbitch in this whole world. You had the best quarterback in America sitting across the breakfast table from you and you let him get away.'"Copyright © 1998 by Time Inc.