This account chronicles the life and career of John Elway, from his days as a young quarterback at Stanford, through to playing for the Denver Broncos and becoming the hero of "Super Bowl XXXII".
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
November 16, 1981
THE PHOENIX OF PALO ALTO
By Ron Fimrite
A 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 in The 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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent reprint of early Sports Illustrated articles,
By
This review is from: John Elway: The Drive of a Champion (Hardcover)
This book is not to be missed for John Elway fans. It reprints a total of 18 Sports Illustrated articles covering the career of John Elway, ranging from 1981 (when he was still a junior at Stanford) to 1998 (his first Super Bowl victory in SB XXXII). Photos that appeared in the original articles are also reprinted with each story. Left out are what might be termed the "negative" articles (i.e., none of Elway's first 3 Super Bowls are covered), while several of Elway's more amazing regular season and playoff victories are reviewed, leaving the reader with an overwhelmingly positive impression. In this book, you can read about how heralded an athlete Elway was all the way back in college, and how his acclaim followed him through his career in the NFL. One critique I would give this book is that, for space, all the articles have been edited, and so each chapter includes several annoying ellipses (...) that let you know you're not reading everything that was originally printed. However, the bulk of the stories are included. If you are interested in reading an objective (i.e., non Denver beat writer) account of what type of QB John Elway was and how he helped the Broncos (and the Stanford Cardinals), this book is not to be missed!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ultimate Elway book for any football fan,
By tx6@hotmail.com (Houston Texas) - See all my reviews
This review is from: John Elway: The Drive of a Champion (Hardcover)
This book covers the Elway career from College all the way to the big game in January where he finally got his much deserved Lombardi. It has several excerts and SI Photos from the past. A true collector's item
4.0 out of 5 stars
Somewhat incomplete,
By Mad Dog "maddog6969" (TimbuckThree, Tennessee) - See all my reviews
This review is from: John Elway: The Drive of a Champion (Hardcover)
Considering the wealth of information present in their archives, I would have expected more from the folks at SI for their retrospective of John Elway. All in all, SI writers have been fair and appreciative of John's playing over the years and this book goes even farther, leaving out the worst memories and amping up the best. It's out of print now but can usually be found on Ebay fairly easily.
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