John became a star quarterback in high school, and went to Stanford University, a school known for producing legendary quarterbacks, including Frankie Albert, John Brodie, and 1970 Heisman Trophy winner Jim Plunkett. Since John Elway, they've produced Andrew Luck.
Elway had the best pro career of any of them. He once held the record for most wins by a starting quarterback. He led the Denver Broncos to the AFC Championship in the 1986, 1987 and 1989 seasons, but lost the Super Bowl each time. It took him until the 1997 season to get back, but, with a good running game backing up his passing attack for the 1st time, he won back-to-back Super Bowls, and then retired. He then built another Super Bowl winner as the Broncos' general manager.
The Buffalo Bills picked Jim Kelly of the University of Miami 14th, and he made the Hall of Fame. The New England Patriots picked Tony Eason of Illinois 15th, and he got them into their 1st Super Bowl.
The New York Jets took Ken O'Brien of the University of California at Davis 24th, and he was a decent quarterback, but nothing more. For whatever reason, the man who might have been the most talented of the 6, Dan Marino of the University of Pittsburgh, fell to the 27th pick, and was taken by the Miami Dolphins, where he built a Hall of Fame career.
Left to right: Elway, Blackledge, Kelly, Eason, O'Brien, Marino.
Only one of them, Elway, won a Super Bowl. Put together, they were 2-9 in Super Bowls -- take Elway out, and they were 0-6. (Kelly was 0-4 of that.)
Now, I come to the elephant in the room. With the 4th pick in the 1983 NFL Draft, the Denver Broncos picked... Chris Hinton, a guard from Northwestern University. The 1st pick belonged to the Baltimore Colts, and they picked Elway.
Elway refused to play for the Colts. Of North America's "Big Four" sports, the NFL is the league in which the players have the least amount of power. yet Elway refused to play for the Colts.
He was also a baseball player, and had already played in the New York Yankees' minor-league system. He told the Colts that if they drafted him, he would play baseball instead.
How good was he? Hard to tell. In 1982, playing for the Oneonta Yankees of the New York-Penn League, which is "short-season Class A ball," he was an outfielder, playing 42 games, batting .318 with 4 home runs and 25 RBIs. He was 22 years old.
John Elway of the Oneonta Yankees, 1982.
That's pronounced "OHN-ee-ON-tah."
If he had stuck with baseball, theoretically, he could have played for the Class A Fort Lauderdale Yankees in 1983, the Class AA Nashville Sounds in 1984, and the Class AAA Columbus Clippers in 1985, with a chance to ride the "Columbus Shuttle" and get called up to the big club that season, around or after his 25th birthday.
He had a better chance to advance in football, but baseball did give him some leverage.
He tried to take the high road. He said he wanted to remain on the West Coast, while Baltimore is on the East Coast. Somebody pointed out that the Yankees were on the East Coast, but Elway said, "They play baseball during the summertime." He wanted to avoid cold weather. (But he played in a few snowstorms for the Broncos.)
But he let it slip that, "I would be a garbage collector before I'd play for Baltimore." Hearing that, Terry Bradshaw, still the quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers and a man who was 4-0 in Super Bowls, told him, "You should play baseball," and told the media, "He's not the kind of guy you win championships with." As it turned out, the 1st 14 years of Elway's pro career showed that Bradshaw knew what he was talking about.
The way history can change: One plan was to trade Elway's rights to the San Francisco 49ers for Joe Montana, who'd won the Super Bowl in the 1981 season, but had a bad 1982. The San Diego Chargers were negotiating a new contract with Dan Fouts, and thought that if they had Elway, that would make Fouts cave on his demands. Both of those teams were on the West Coast.
The Colts were 0-8-1 in the strike-shortened 1982 season. Their quarterbacks were:
* Mike Pagel, a rookie in 1982, starting all 9 games, with a completion percentage just over 50 percent, and 5 touchdowns against 7 interceptions. Like Elway, he was also a college baseball star, and helped Arizona State win the 1981 College World Series.
* Art Schlichter, a star at Ohio State, winning a Big 10 title, also a rookie in 1982, expected to win the starting job, but lost it to Pagel in training camp, and appeared in just 3 games, with a completion percentage under 46 percent, no touchdowns, 2 interceptions. He was already in the midst of the gambling addiction that would ruin his pro career and, eventually, put him in prison. And...
* David Humm, who led Nebraska to wins in the Orange, Sugar and Cotton Bowls, and was Ken Stabler's backup on the Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders' Super Bowl XI winners, but was 31 and had a grand total of 1 NFL start, which he lost. In 1982, he appeared in 2 games, with a completion percentage over 56 percent, no touchdowns, 1 interception.
Pagel wasn't panning out. Schlichter was bad news. Humm was fine as a backup, but not as a starter. The Colts drafted Elway because they needed a quarterback. If they didn't sign Elway, they were up the creek.
Ernie Accorsi, then their general manager (and later the GM who built 2 Super Bowl winners with the New York Giants), was sure that the 1984 Draft wouldn't be a good one for quarterbacks. He predicted that none would be taken in the 1st round.
He turned out to be right: Not until the 10th pick of the 2nd round was one taken, Boomer Esiason of Maryland, by the Cincinnati Bengals. In the 3rd round, the Giants chose Jeff Hostetler of West Virginia, while the Washington Redskins chose Jay Schroeder of UCLA. The Colts would still have been better off taking Esiason, Hostetler or Schroeder than sticking with Pagel, Schlichter and Humm.
On May 2, 6 days after the Draft, the Colts traded the rights to Elway to the Broncos for Hinton, quarterback Mark Herrmann, and the Broncos' 1st pick in the 1984 Draft, which turned out to be Ron Solt, a guard who'd protected Esiason at Maryland. Solt had a decent pro career. Hinton turned out to be one of the top offensive linemen of the 1980s.
The key, though, was Herrmann. He had starred at Purdue, winning Big 10 MVP in 1980 and MVPs in 3 minor bowl games. But as a pro, he didn't do much: He failed to challenge Pagel for the starting job, lasted just 2 years with the Colts, went to San Diego, then to the Los Angeles Rams, and then closed his career with 3 more seasons with the Colts, retiring in 1992.
Pagel led the Colts to a 7-9 season in 1983, a big improvement. But on March 29, 1984, team owner Bob Irsay moved them to Indianapolis. They hadn't made the Playoffs since 1977, and wouldn't again until 1987, wouldn't again until 1995, and would falter again before drafting Peyton Manning in 1998.
Elway's refusal to play for the Colts has often been blamed for the team's move. And it was seen, and sometimes still is, as a total diva move. Has he been treated too harshly for it?
Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame John Elway for Not Playing for the Baltimore Colts
5. The Shadow of Johnny Unitas. It's been 18 years since he died, and 47 years since he last took a snap in a regular-season game, but Johnny Unitas, who lifted the Colts to glory at the end of the 1950s and kept them there into the early 1970s, is still in the conversation for the title of Greatest Quarterback Who Ever Lived.
That wasn't a problem after the Colts moved. People in Indianapolis knew who Unitas was, of course. But he never played for them. What did they care what he did in Baltimore? It did no good for Indianapolis, or for Indiana as a whole.
And once the Ravens arrived, people in Baltimore knew that this wasn't the Colts, so the next great Baltimore quarterback, whoever it turned out to be -- and you can debate whether Joe Flacco qualifies as having preceded Lamar Jackson in that regard -- he wasn't playing for the same team as Unitas.
It's why every potentially great Yankees player gets measured against Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and so on; but no potentially great Mets player gets measured against Willie Mays, because, while Mays ended his career with the Mets, his best years in New York were with the baseball Giants.
Elway would have known that playing for the Colts would have meant playing in the massive shadow of ol' Number 19. Whereas, in Denver, he was playing for a team that hadn't won a Super Bowl, or a title in the AFL before that. They'd had good quarterbacks: Frank Tripucka, Charley Johnson and Craig Morton. But the closest they'd gotten to a title was Morton leading them to the 1977 AFC Championship, and then losing Super Bowl XII. There was room for somebody to become the definitive greatest quarterback in Bronco history.
Thanks to Elway, there no longer is such room. Peyton Manning, who did play for the Colts, albeit in Indianapolis, knew that before going to Denver, but his legacy was already secure, so wasn't an issue.
4. Artificial Turf. From 1984 to 2007, the Colts played at the Hoosier Dome, renamed the RCA Dome in 1994. Since the Colts were going to move to Indianapolis no matter what Elway did, he would have ended up doing for most of his career what he never actually did: Play home games on artificial turf.
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The RCA Dome, in its last years. Artificial turf.
All those years in Denver, no matter how bad the grass was, it was still natural grass, and it was better for his body. He played his last game at the age of 38, and he was still good enough then to lead his team to a championship, and be named the Most Valuable Player of the Super Bowl. Do you think that would have been the case if he played all those years on the plastic stuff?
Mile High Stadium. Real grass.
Okay, Peyton Manning was able to do it in Indianapolis. But I wonder what shape he's in now. In addition, for most of his career, the Colts were in the AFC South, where the road games were in Houston with its retractable roof, Jacksonville and Nashville, all with real grass.
For Elway's entire career, the Indianapolis Colts were in the AFC East, where the road games were at the Meadowlands, Foxboro and Orchard Park, all with artificial turf, and frequently with nasty weather. He would have played very few games on grass at all.
3. The Uncertainty. It's not just that the Colts were bad at the time. The organization knew it was going to play the 1983 season at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. But they didn't even know how much longer they were going to play in the Baltimore area.
Memorial Stadium
Irsay had wanted out of Memorial for a long time. Its seating capacity, its parking facilities, and especially its office space were much too small. He had told the City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland that if the Colts didn't get a new stadium, he would move the team. They called his bluff, and refused to fund a new stadium. It turned out, he wasn't bluffing.
Bob Irsay
After all, even if Elway had played the 1983 season for the Colts, he wouldn't have been playing the 1984 season, or any future season, in Baltimore. As long as he was with the Colts after that, it would have been in Indianapolis.
Does this contradict Reason Number 5? Or Reason Number 4? Not at all: In 1983, Elway didn't know the Colts were leaving Unitas' town. Apparently, neither did Accorsi: On a recent podcast, he said, "If he plays in Baltimore, the team never moves."
But Irsay had his mind made up: No funding for a new stadium from the City or the State, no more Baltimore Colts.
2. Frank Kush. The Colts' head coach at the time had previously coached Arizona State University from 1958 to 1979, 22 seasons. And he coached some pretty good players: Charley Taylor, Curley Culp and Mike Haynes are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. John Jefferson probably should be. Junior Ah You is in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. J.D. Hill, Benny Malone, Woody Green and Bob Breunig had good NFL careers.
But in all that time, he produced just 2 All-American quarterbacks: Danny White and Mark Malone. White was Roger Staubach's backup on the Dallas Cowboys for a few years. After Staubach retired, White got them to 3 straight NFC Championship Games -- and lost them all. Similarly, Malone was a backup to Terry Bradshaw on the Pittsburgh Steelers, and had to wait until the Hall-of-Famer retired. But he didn't do much as their starter.
Kush was a run-first coach. He might not have been the right head coach for a young quarterback. He certainly wasn't doing Mike Pagel or Art Schlichter any favors.
Frank Kush, prowling the sideline at Memorial Stadium
Then there was the story about how he lost his ASU job in 1979. A former player filed a lawsuit against the school, accusing Kush and his staff of mental harassment and physical abuse, including a punch in the mouth from Kush. Kush obstructed the investigation by telling his players not to talk to school officials, and it was this, rather than the accusations, that got him fired. He got 3 more pro coaching jobs in his lifetime, he never coached another college game. No other college would take a chance on him.
But it's worth noting that Kush was cleared of the abuse charges, although not of various violations that would get ASU put on probation. It's also worth noting that none of the players I mentioned have backed up the accusations with abuse mentions of their own.
And the most famous athlete who ever played for him has said nothing but good things about him. He was a black kid from just outside Philadelphia who came to Tempe on a football scholarship, and played for the freshman team in 1964, but was talked into switching to baseball. His name was Reggie Jackson.
But once a reputation is damaged, it can be hard to repair it. Especially when somebody with a big mouth continues to bad-mouth you:
1. Jack Elway. Like so many great athletes before and since, John Elway did pretty much what his family told him to do. Jack Elway had a playing career that ended with a knee injury in 1950, but he went into coaching, and became a highly respected high school coach in Washington State.
He went on to become head coach at San Jose State from 1979 to 1983, and then Stanford from 1984 to 1988. He also coached the Frankfurt Galaxy of the World League of American Football in 1991 and '92. From then until 1999, thanks to a good word from his son, he served as a scout with the Broncos. He died in 2001.
Jack Elway as Stanford head coach
Jack Elway did not like Frank Kush. Jack coached in the Pacific-8 Conference as an assistant at Washington State University (his alma mater) from 1972 to 1975. Arizona and Arizona State joined the league in 1978, making it the Pac-10. (It's now the Pac-12.) Before that, they were in the Western Athletic Conference. Jack didn't return to the Pac-10 until 1984, with Stanford. By that point, Kush was in Indianapolis with the Colts.
Only once did Jack Elway and Frank Kush ever coach against each other. It was September 22, 1973, when Washington State, with Jack on the staff of head coach Jim Sweeney, went to Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, and took on Frank's Sun Devils, then ranked Number 13 in the country. ASU won, 20-9.
So, either something happened in that game that ticked Jack off; or something else happened, some other time, possibly the 1979 allegations. And this made Jack tell John never to play for Kush. (It shouldn't have been the other violations, because that wouldn't have mattered in the NFL.) And John listened to Jack, and told the Colts words to the effect of, "Hell, no, I won't go."
On that podcast I mentioned earlier, Ernie Accorsi said, "I think he would have played for the Colts. We would have made a coaching change." Maybe this could have placated Jack Elway.
There is a fascinating postscript. John's son, John Albert Elway III, known as Jack Elway like his grandfather, was an All-State quarterback at Cherry Creek High School in the Denver suburbs.
John and Jack Elway III at the new Broncos stadium,
currently named Empower Field at Mile High
Jack signed to play for Dennis Erickson, who was the elder Jack Elway's offensive coordinator at San Jose State. He later became head coach at Idaho (where he won the Big Sky Conference in 1985), Wyoming, Washington State, Miami (where he won National Championships in 1989 and 1991 and 3 Big East titles), the Seattle Seahawks, Oregon State (where he won the Pac-10 in 2000), the San Francisco 49ers, and the school that the younger Jack Elway chose to attend, where Erickson had already won the 2007 Pac-10 title.
That school was the one where Frank Kush made his name: Arizona State. And the playing surface at Sun Devil Stadium had been named Frank Kush Field. (Kush died in 2017.)
After redshirting for his freshman season, 2009, Jack Elway realized that he was living out a dream that was not his own, and quit football. He graduated early with an economics degree, and went into the other family business: John has a string of car dealerships. But, again, there was the pressure of living up to what his father did. After 5 years, he quit that. He went back to Colorado, got into an argument with his girlfriend, and hit her. He pleaded down to a lesser charge, and was sentenced to probation.
Then, one day, he saw someone wearing an unusual baseball-style cap. His name was Geoff Muller, and, together, they turned his basement business into a company called Mint Tradition. It's a success, and he's happy.
How would the younger Jack Elway's life have been different if the elder Jack Elway had let John Elway think for himself, and accept being drafted by the Baltimore Colts? Hard to say. Jack and his sisters would still have been born, because John met his 1st wife, Janet Buchan, at Stanford, where she was a competitive swimmer. But maybe growing up in Indiana would have presented different opportunities to growing up in Colorado, and Jack would have left football and found his interest sooner.
VERDICT: Guilty. Yes, you can blame John Elway for not playing for the Baltimore Colts. Plenty of athletes have been drafted by teams they didn't initially want to play for, and it worked out anyway.
Besides, Kush only lasted 2 more years with the Colts. In 1985 and '86, the Colts were coached by Rod Dowhower. From 1986 to 1991, Ron Meyer, who got them to the Playoffs in 1987. They lost in the 1st round, 38-21 to the Cleveland Browns, who lost the AFC Championship Game to the Broncos.
If Elway had been quarterbacking the Indianapolis Colts in the 1987 season, would he have helped them beat the Browns? And then reach Super Bowl XXII? Would his Colts have been so easily battered by the Washington Redskins in that epic 2nd quarter? Maybe, maybe not.
But John Elway will always have a mixed reputation. Great athlete. Legendary quarterback. Struggled to turn individual success into team success. Finally got it done. Went out a back-to-back Champion.
But also, something of a spoiled brat, who was almost 23 years old, and maybe, just that once, shouldn't have listened to Daddy.