STEVE YOUNG IS MUCH MORE THAN A PASSING ART      

Feb. 1984 THIS PEOPLE Magazine

The trappings of success haven't bogged down Steve Young. Despite all the press, the NCAA records, the regular appearances on "Good Morning America," the elevation to true Cougar blue hero status, the all-America athlete pulls up to interviews driving his well-used `65 Oldsmobile, and wearing faded Levis, a sleeveless hunting vest, and Levi jacket. He's got curly dark hair and light blue eyes that women die for (though he insists he can't get a date, and if you believe that you'd buy the proverbial piece of land in Florida). His muscular build doesn't at all fit the tall, rangy quarterback mold.
While waiting in the Cougar football office for a phone interview with a writer in Ohio to come through, Young jokes with long-snap specialist Regan Andrews. Andrews wants to know how Steve's car is running, and Young insists he only needs $500 to fix the transmission, that he's sure it has another 100,000 miles in it. The whole image is casual, to put it delicately. But also comfortable. Despite in the Levis, Young has that inherent charismatic charm. Here's a fellow who, in probability, will soon be making more money than most senior executives. But he prefers a simple approach to life. He's outgoing, adept at expressing himself, and a bit shy. He's not a big mouth, not a glory hog, with his "Shucks, I'm just glad to be here" attitude.
When all the Heisman momentum was building he kept insisting he was honored to even be mentioned with Mike Rozier and others. When the offense sputtered during the Holiday Bowl, he was the first to say, "We played terrible out there." He's always the first guy on the field to run and high-five a teammate who scores. When asked on KSI.'s "Public Pulse" (17 November 1983) why the Cougars hadn't been quite up to snuff in recent weeks, he said the caller must not be referring to the defense, which had played solid ball, but to some of the offense's errors (and BYU's offense was leading the nation at the time). When asked where he'd like to play pro ball he repeatedly answered, "Gee, I just can't imagine someone paying me to have fun," then admitted a liking for the Giants, his hometown team. When David Hartman asked him on national TV if it was hard to keep BYU's standards, he said it was no big deal, the rules were easy to accept, and BYU was a great place. He says he loves it when he can't walk for two days after a game. It makes him feel like he's gotten beat up with the rest of the guys.
Young's first contribution to the BYU program was as humble as he is. So far down the totem pole that his name didn't even appear on the depth chart, Young was almost switched to safety. Gordon Hudson was unimpressed with what he saw in his freshman teammate. "Here's this guy who's built like a fullback, and he's wearing these strange high-topped, shoes." The first time he goes back to pass he stumbles and falls on his butt. I said to myself, `What is this guy, a walk-on?' He looked ridiculous." (Sports Illustrated, 14 November 1983.) As modest as were his beginnings, Young's torrid pace on the field has redeemed him in a big way. He practically had a regular room assignment at "Good Morning America."Major articles about him appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, and Sports Illustrated. And he did a twenty-minute interview on CNN. Gil Brandt, the Dallas Cowboy's president of player personnel, said, "Young is a definite number one NFL pick. If you could somehow measure what one player means to a team, Steve Young would be the most valuable player in college football today. I don't know whether LaVell Edwards would ever say this, but I think he's better than any other quarterback they've had. And he's the most accurate passer I've ever seen. Period." NFL scouts rank Young second on the top-twelve list of `83 draft picks (Sports Illustrated, 14 November 1983). Another pro scout was quoted in SI as saying, "Young's overall skills- passing, running, scrambling and his coolness are far better than anyone I've seen in the West in the past ten years, and that includes Stanford's John Elway." Even the stoic Edwards conceded some information to Salt Lake Tribune writer Dick Rosetta when asked to rank his quarterbacks. Athletic ability: "Young by a mile." Running ability: "Young, then Wilson." Scrambling: "Young and McMahon." Best long-passer: "A tossup." Best short passer: "All of them." Best intermediate passer: "Young and McMahon' " (28 October 1983).
After Air Force (which finished the season ranked l5th in the nation) fell 46-28 to BYU and, more specifically, a Young field day as he threw for an NCAA record 18 consecutive passes for 39 completions and 486 yards, Coach Ken Hatfield told the Denver Post (25 September 1983) "Young is tall, has great peripheral vision and a quick release. Plus he can run. Sometimes he'll just run a naked bootleg without even telling his teammates. Nobody who has ever played the game has done it any better." Young impressed the folks in Colorado Springs with more than total yards gained. After walking to midfield for the coin toss Steve watched while all twenty-four Falcon seniors, including Derek Foster, walked toward him. Foster had been in a coma for two months after a car accident the previous winter. This was his first return to the Academy, and 34,255 stood to honor him. Young had tears on his face as he reached out and affectionately cuffed Foster on the back of the neck. Said Marty Louthan, the Air Force quarterback and himself a legitimate Heisman contender, "I think Steve was the most emotional person out there. If I had a vote for the Heisman Trophy, it would go to Steve Young."
There's no subtle way to list Young's plaudits. He was a first-team pick on every all-America list. The Football News named him Player of the Year. His second-place finish for the Heisman was the highest ever for a BYU athlete, and he was two-time WAC Offensive Player of the Year. In just twenty-six games he set thirteen NCAA records, including highest average yards per game in a season (395.1 ), career (65.2) and single-season (71.3) records for completion percentage, and the second best passing efficiency rating in NCAA history. The academic all-America also performed well in the classroom. He almost graduated a semester early with a double major in accounting and international relations, and was one of eleven named as a National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame scholar-athlete for 1983.
All this from a kid who was a wishbone and veer quarterback at Greenwich High in Connecticut, where as a sophomore his team was dubbed "the lousy bunch." Young didn't like the nickname. Two years later the same team played for the Connecticut state championship. At age thirteen he suffered through an embarrassing baseball season without a base hit. The next year he led the league with a .600 batting average. "I'm the kind of guy," Steve admits, "that when, somebody says I can't do something, I'll die proving him wrong. So many people had all these opinions that I couldn't throw at BYU, and all I wanted was a chance to prove them wrong. But I had to keep a good attitude. When I finally got my chance I was somewhat prepared because I'd been working so hard on my own. No one else cared about me when I was a freshman. No coach would come up and say, 'Oh, I don't think you're throwing the ball correctly. Let me help you.' I was on my own. But I watched closely and worked hard. When I did get my chance, I hadn't just been sitting around picking my nose for two years."
LaVell Edwards concurs, saying Steve has come further in a shorter period of time than anyone he's seen. "He didn't have the red-shirt year all our other successful quarterbacks have had. But he has still reached that period in his career where he's one of the most totally dominating players you'll ever see."
Young has the blue ribbon pedigree you'd expect of a champion. 'The great-great-great grandson of Brigham Young, and the son of LeGrande (known as"Grit" during his 1950s football career at BYU) and Sherry Young, Steve grew up in what he calls a "typical" family of four boys and one girl. "She took a real beating because she was the only girl, but she's really come out of it for the better," is Steve's appraisal of his sister.
"Our family was very active, we were always playing something. My dad tried to keep good grass, and it was always dead, because the whole neighborhood was always over at our house. There were always forty kids on our lawn. But it was a good situation because our parents supported us in anything we wanted to do."
That support went beyond athletics. "My dad is really big on attitude. He made sure that our priorities were in the right direction. Nothing was ever more important than school. Even now dad doesn't call to ask me about my stats, he wants to know how I'm doing in school. I'm sure he would have pulled me out of football as a freshman or sophomore, maybe even last year, if my grades hadn't been up there."
Looking back at the events of the past two seasons, Young says he would never have believed things would go as they have. Which is a major reason he says all the attention hasn't phased him much. "Just a couple of years ago I was a little kid in the dorms, and I wasn't doing anything great." When the nod came for him to take his place in the Cougar quarterback succession, all he "wanted to do was go out there and not embarrass myself. As soon as I found I wouldn't embarrass myself I wanted to just play well and win." And he has played extremely well in what is considered by many the most complicated passing offense in college football. "You spend two years here just figuring out where your guys are going. Then you spend a year trying to figure out what their guys are doing. I really don't have an idea until I start backing up where I'm going to throw. Our receivers have to read the defense before they make their move, and I have to make decisions like this," and he snaps his fingers, "because choices disappear as the seconds tick by.'There's no way you can tell yourself you're as experienced as the guy who's had the playing time, because you just won't get to that fourth and fifth guy like you should. Even a year ago I couldn't read defenses as well as I can now, and I wasn't as cool under pressure. I guess it's getting thrown into the fire and seeing how fast you can dance. And there are the intangible qualities that improve too.'That feeling of knowing you're going to put `em in the end zone."
Does a quarterback take more pressure than his teammates-especially a winning quarterback who's expected to pull out the tight ones? "Oh, definitely. Here at BYU, you're the guy. If the quarterback doesn't play well, nine times out of ten you're going to lose. You've got to assume the responsibility. But I enjoy having the guys look to me and say, `Okay, let's see what you can do now.' You've spent three or four years trying to get in the position where they can look to you to be the guy who does it when it's really important." Twice last year Young demonstrated what he means. In a game stymied with serious injuries, including a concussion that benched Young for most of the first half, BYU found itself losing to Utah State with three minutes to play. The offense had been tentative all day, two top receivers were sidelined with season-ending injuries. But Young engineered a last-ditch drive that culminated when he ran for a touchdown with eleven seconds left. "I felt the responsibility and thought it was a great opportunity to not let the guys down and show them we could make it. It was one of the greatest feelings I've ever had."
Young showed his stuff again in the Holiday Bowl (though he admits the BYU defense won that game). With four minutes left and BYU trailing 17-14 the Cougars took over on their own seven-yard line. In nine plays (including a fourth-and-ten completion to Waymon Hamilton and a fifty-three-yard prayer to Mike Eddo), Young drove his club to the fourteen-yard line, where the Cougars called a "trick play," about which cornerback Jon Young admitted during pre-bowl practice, "I've never seen it before. I don't know when they've practiced it." Young handed off on a fake sweep to Eddie Stinnett, who headed right, then stopped and threw back to Young in the flat, who raced in for a touchdown. With his college career over, the sentimental---by his own admission---Young says he's tried to prepare himself to say good-bye to BYU. "I'm very realistic that it's over, but it's hard too. I think that besides all the wins and everything else, the greatest thing has just been the people you enjoy being around. My teammates, my coaches, everyone. Even when I haven't had to come and practice and haven't needed to be [at the football office], I've still spent a lot of time here. I'll study here. This is where my friends are. The coaches don't just care about you in the fall."
As he anticipates the future, which he expects to include law school and the pros, Young says, "I have some very strong feelings about even why I got a chance to play football at BYU. I know where my strength comes from. Lots of times I've looked at great athletes and wondered if they've felt like it's just them out there. But I know my personal story, and if I didn't have the strength from other sources, I'd be a failure. I can't do it alone. Especially here, at BYU, and handle the pressure of being the quarterback. I remember that as a sophomore I got to start a game, and I wasn't really prepared for any of this. I was physically sick before the game. I don't ever want to come across as a religious fanatic, because I'm not, but I know where my strength comes from. And if I ever lost perspective of that, it would be a very short amount of time before I'd fail."
There are few who expect Steve Young to fail in the pros---and beyond, for that matter. He's got the perspective, the drive, the talent to manipulate his future. A Denver Post writer summarized it well. "You run across one like Young and you want to think he's real because not only does he perform admirably on the field, but seems to have his priorities in the right order. In a day when so many athletes are pampered or overpaid, guys like Young are almost too good to be true." by Sheri L. Dew [LDS readers will recognize her as an important leader in the Women's Relief Society program of the LDS church now.]      

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