Rick Reilly article on Elway

[honz]

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3930609


This is a story I want to tell ALL athletes who think that what they do, how they act, the little kindnesses they give or withhold from fans don't matter.

It'll take only a minute.

My wife, Cynthia, was adopted. At 36, she found half her biological family on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana. Turns out she had four half brothers, one named Lil Bob, who was as big as a tree.

Lil Bob, a bar owner, could pick a man up with one hand and throw him out the front door. He was gregarious and funny and always seemed to have his son, Jake, hanging onto one of his huge legs. Unfortunately, he was also a full-blown alcoholic. Many were the days that started and ended with a quart of Jack Daniel's, although you could never tell.

In size and in heart, Lil Bob was one of Montana's biggest Broncos fans. His hero was John Elway. He joked that he wanted to be buried in an Elway jersey, with pallbearers in Elway jerseys, and an Elway football in his huge hand. His one regret was dropping out of school in eighth grade, ending his football career. His one dream was to take Jake to a Broncos game. Sometimes on the reservation, the dreams come small.

Last March, Lil Bob's liver failed. One awful hospital day, Jake, now 13, walked up to the bed, took his dad's head in his hands, put his mouth to his forehead and told him he couldn't go yet. Told him he needed him to stay and take him to a Broncos game. Stay and watch him grow up and play for the Broncos.

Lil Bob's death, a few days later, seemed to send Jake into that shapeless, black sinkhole where boys go when their best friend is gone for reasons they can't understand. "I tried to talk to him, but he was closed to it," says Jake's mom, Lona Burns. "He started doing bad in school. Kids picked on him. Every day I fought him just to go. His grades dropped. He didn't even care about going to football practice, didn't want to play."

Thirteen-year-olds don't meet gods.
Worse yet, since the day Lil Bob died, Jake hadn't cried.

And then, this past October, one of Lil Bob's best friends — a restaurant owner named Christopher Hamlet — decided to make good on an unfulfilled dream: He bought two plane tickets, packed up Jake and flew to Denver. Jake was finally going to a Broncos game.

As locals, Cynthia and I took them to lunch at one of Elway's restaurants so Jake could see all the jerseys and photos. The kid was so excited he hardly ate. And that was before a certain Hall of Fame QB walked in, all keg-chested and pigeon-toed. Immediately, Jake turned into an ice sculpture.

We introduced them, and it took a few seconds before Jake could even stick out his hand. Apparently, 13-year-olds are not used to meeting gods.

Elway took the time to sign Jake's football and pose for a picture. He even made us all go outside, where the light was better. Then, as we said goodbye — Jake's feet floating a foot off the ground — Elway turned and said, out of nowhere, "Hey, why don't you guys come by the box today?"

And the next thing Jake knew, he was in John Elway's luxury box at the game, asking him any question he wanted, all with a grin that threatened to split his happy head in half.

Then Elway said, "Comin' to dinner?"

And suddenly Jake was having his lettuce wedge cut for him by the legend, who tousled the kid's cowlick. Like a dad might.

Halfway through the night, a guy came out of the bathroom and said, "Are you guys with that kid? Because he's in there talking to his mom on the phone, crying. Is he OK?"

Yes, Jake would be OK.

"Jake came back a changed boy," his mom says. He started climbing out of that hole. He started making A's again. Started loving football again. He told his mom, "When I make it to the NFL, I'm going to buy you a big house in Denver so you can come to my games."

And I ask myself: Why did Elway do all that? Maybe because his late father, Jack, was his best friend, too? Maybe because his own son, Jack, went away to college last fall? Or maybe because that's how he is. In my 26 years of knowing Elway, I've never seen him turn down an autograph request, a picture request, a "Can I just tell you something?" request.

A lot of athletes don't want the burden that comes with being a role model. But what I want to tell them is: You don't get to choose. You don't get to tell 13-year-old boys with holes in their hearts who can help them heal.

I know it's a hassle, but it matters. Because you never know when you might just lead a kid out to where the light is better.

[Denver Native (Carol)]

Thanks so much for sharing - #7 definitely is my hero :salute:

[broncofaninfla]

Great stuff, brought tears to my eyes.

[topscribe]

Absolutely the best read of the week. Thanks, Honz. :beer:

-----

[TXBRONC]

Indeed this the best read of the week.

[smith49]

WOW! there goes elway again. showing us all why he is the best to ever play the game, on and off the field. what a great man.

[Medford Bronco]

Great post and agreed with all, Elway IS a class act.

[NameUsedBefore]

IMO, Rick Reilly is the best sports writer ever. The stuff he wrote in the back of SI was amazing; great stuff as usual here.

[Medford Bronco]

IMO, Rick Reilly is the best sports writer ever. The stuff he wrote in the back of SI was amazing; great stuff as usual here.

He also wrote a great article in 96 an appreciate of Elway's career. I still have it at home.

Great stuff :salute:

[smith49]

IMO, Rick Reilly is the best sports writer ever. The stuff he wrote in the back of SI was amazing; great stuff as usual here.

yah, i have agree there NUB. reilly was the only real reason to pick up an SI for a long time. well, that and the swimmsiut issue.

[drewloc]

Top notch Honz, it is a touching story and a great find. :salute:

[SmilinAssasSin27]

good stuff.

[G_Money]

This is a good article. :beer:

Below is the greatest article Rick Reilly has ever written.



Rick Reilly - December 30, 1996, Sports Illustrated

When you order up the statue of the greatest quarterback of the last 20 years, make sure you get the sock right. It has to be pulled all the way down, preferably with a defensive end's fingernail still in it. Give the right shoe a flat tire, and show the jersey yanked off one shoulder pad, the work of a blitzing linebacker who thought he had himself an appearance on the next NFL's Greatest Hits video but instead got only a fleeting handful of orange-and-blue Denver Broncos nylon. It's true, you know. John Elway has spent more time on the job having his padding adjusted than Pamela Anderson Lee.

While you're at it, see if the sculptor can put in a hint of the bulges of tape and a knee brace underneath the legs of the pants, and of the limp that made Elway walk like John Wayne in high heels yet vanished when he took off sprinting, needing six yards and somehow always getting six yards and an inch.

Try to show the jaw-dropping power of that right arm, the one that shredded receivers' gloves and knocked the wind out of strong men. Elway threw the worst screen passes in NFL history, but he could get the football to you at rush hour in the middle of Penn Station from a hoagie stand across the street.

Make the eyes huge, wide as beer coasters, like the eyes of somebody witnessing a disaster—which, come to think of it, Elway usually was. Seems like every time you looked up from your nachos, it was fourth-and-10, the Denver pass protection had collapsed like a bad soufflé, and he was starring in another cliffhanger: John Elway and the Pocket of Doom.

Keep it honest, too. Show those dark circles under the eyes, and the crow's feet—more crow's feet than any 36-year-old man should have, carved there by 14 years of trying to win with small-fry linemen, cement-footed receivers and witness-protection-program running backs. Everybody wants to talk about Super Bowls, but forget Super Bowls for a second and try this: Punch REWIND on your time machine and put Elway behind all of Joe Montana's lines in San Francisco and Montana behind all of Elway's lines in Denver. Nothing much changes in San Francisco, but by the age of 28 Montana is either dead or selling life insurance.

That is the thing, really. John Elway never had a Guy McIntyre. John Elway never had a Jerry Rice. John Elway had a whole lot of guys who are now waiting tables.

So far in Elway's career, his offensive linemen and wide receivers have been voted to the Pro Bowl a combined six times. In Dan Marino's 14 seasons, Miami Dolphins offensive linemen and wide receivers have been selected to the Pro Bowl 30 times. More than any athlete since Wilt Chamberlain on the Philadelphia and San Francisco Warriors of the late 1950s and early '60s, Elway has had to play at a superb level game after game, year after year, to make his team a winner. Though usually surrounded by a human rummage sale, Elway has won more games as a starter than any other quarterback in NFL history (126). It's the equivalent of carving Mount Rushmore with a spoon or composing Beethoven's Ninth on a kazoo.

But Elway's career has been about more than just winning. It has been about escaping defeat a half page from the end of the novel, leaping over pits of fire with the microdot hidden in his cigarette lighter. On first down Elway was "pretty average," his Stanford coach Paul Wiggin once said. But when the elementary school kids are being held hostage and the detonator reads 00:03, whom would you rather have clipping the wires than Elway? He may be the only quarterback in history who could stand on his own two-yard line, trailing by five with less than two minutes to play, no timeouts left, windchill -5°, and cause the opposing coach to mutter, "We're in trouble."

"My fondest memories of John's career," says his wife, Janet, "will always be with me curled up on the floor in the fetal position, my hands over my eyes, and one of my girlfriends giving me the play-by-play."

Once, in New York against the Jets in 1986, Elway dropped deep into his own end zone to pass. As usual, nobody was open. He stepped up toward the goal line, tapping, tapping, tapping the ball, the fall of Saigon swirling around him. Still nobody open. Suddenly, from behind, defensive end Mark Gastineau came flying at Elway's helmet. Without seeing him, Elway ducked, a la Marshal Dillon during a fight in the Long Branch Saloon. Gastineau got Elway's sleeve as he hurtled by, pulling Elway nearly but not completely over. Elway straightened up and looked some more. Nobody open. He broke forward as though to run, an old trick he had pulled a hundred times: Draw the safeties up and then stop a foot short of the line of scrimmage and fire a deep one over their heads and straight through their hearts. But this time the safeties didn't buy it. Something came at him from the left. He danced right. Something came from the right. He danced left. The tension was maddening. Then defensive end Barry Bennett arrived and rocked Elway from the left. Down went Elway, headed for a sack and a safety—except that as he was falling, he unloaded the football, submarined it in a tight spiral to running back Gerald Willhite at the 12. Lying spent on the cold turf, Bennett stared up at the sky, his hands on his helmet, looking like a man who had just had his pocket picked.

Asked once how he could duck 275-pound defensive ends he couldn't even see, Elway said, "I hear them." This makes sense if you know Elway. He can't be in a room without the radio or television on and can't fall asleep or stay asleep without the TV tuned to Nick at Nile or PBS. ("We get a lot of subliminal Mary Tyler Moore," says Janet.) So maybe it's possible that in a stadium of 75,000 screaming loons, he can hear the padding feet of an assassin. "The other thing is, I like to hang in there and pretend I don't know they're coming," he says. "Then they get up a bunch of speed and go for my head, and I can duck 'em.

"Oh, and shadows," Elway says.

Shadows?

"Yeah, especially in domes. I think I've always done it, but I really noticed it the other day [after a game at Minnesota]. With all those lights, your body gives off shadows in every direction." This is a very hard thing for a blitzing cornerback to work on. Dammit, Smith, you've got to stop giving off such a shadow!

It's weird, but Elway will be a first-ballot Hall of Famer partly because of all the things he does wrong. For instance, he doesn't stand up tall in the pocket. Years ago his father, Jack, a longtime college coach who's now the director of pro scouting for the Broncos, told him, "Always be ready to run." And so John sets up with his knees bent, constantly bouncing on the balls of his feet, more than ready to leave a sinking ship. Nobody else is close to his nine seasons with at least 3,000 yards passing and 200 rushing.

He routinely throws across the field, making the one pass quarterbacks are taught never to try. Elway does it from one sideline to the other and from one 20-yard line to the other. It's a wonderful way to run up your interception total, but not only have the Denver coaches not told him to stop, they also once put such a pass in their playbook—scramble right, turn suddenly and throw 40 yards down-field and 40 cross-field. "Sometimes in practice that play would come up on one of my snaps," says Elway's old backup Gary Kubiak, now the Broncos' offensive coordinator. "I'd always pretend to slip just before I threw. What could I do? I mean, nobody else in the world can make that throw."

And under a heavy rush Elway turns his back to the line of scrimmage, a cardinal sin. He feels the hit on his body and spins away from the pressure, like the Houston Rockets' Hakeem Olajuwon, even if that sends him running away from his receivers, blockers and sanity. And yet the spin has been to him what the Aston Martin was to James Bond: his signature means of escape. In one of the most phenomenal plays in the NFL this year—Denver against the Oakland Raiders on Monday Night Football on Nov. 4—Elway was in his usual state of peril. Oakland linebacker Pat Swilling nearly had him, but Elway spun away and then, sensing that Swilling had crashed to the ground in the other direction, spun back toward the line of scrimmage—a complete 360 inside the pocket. As more Raiders closed in, Elway spied tight end Shannon Sharpe creeping along the back line of the end zone. Elway loosed a 25-yard clothesline toward a wall of black jerseys and through a window about the size of the drive-through at Wendy's. The ball hit Sharpe in the palms for a touchdown. "John Elway," Pat Summerall once said, "is the master of the inconceivable pass thrown to the unreachable spot."

Good receivers hope that someday they'll wind up in Denver, where all they'll need is the length of a good cigar on their man and Elway will find them. Once they get used to footballs just traveling under the speed of light, of course.

[G_Money]

Former Broncos cornerback Wymon Henderson once stepped in front of an Elway bullet in practice, and the ball ended up stuck in his face mask. In Elway's second season, during a game in Buffalo, he broke free from trouble (imagine that) and scanned the field madly for somebody dressed like him. Forty-five yards downfield, receiver Steve Watson was drifting a little behind a Bills defensive back. Watson kept retreating, and the Bill happily let him go. "No way he can throw it that far," the defensive back said, loud enough for Watson to hear. Famous last words. Just then a missile went sailing over the defender's head and into Watson's arms in the back of the end zone for a 52-yard touchdown.

Hall of Fame quarterback Sammy Baugh once said Elway was "the best I have ever seen" at throwing the 40-yard route. Elway throws so hard, in fact, that when receivers come to the Broncos, they are trained on the Jugs passing machine because no other quarterback can throw the ball hard enough. "When we go to the Pro Bowl, all guys want to ask me about is John," says Sharpe. " 'Hey, man, can you get him to throw me a 40-yard out? Just once?' "

Except for Fran Tarkenton, Elway is probably the only quarterback in history who performs better when Afternoon at the Improv breaks out. Says Kubiak, "We'll be on the headphones during a play, screaming, 'Doggone it, John! What the hell are you doin'?—atta boy, John!" This is what comes from having played street tackle in Northridge, Calif., against bigger boys and then trying to stay alive for four years at Stanford behind offensive lines full of physics and lit majors.

"I always thought Dan Marino was the perfect quarterback," Elway says. "The way he stands back there, the way he releases. But I think I'm something else. I think I'm a football player." Actually, Elway is more than that. He is one of the best athletes of this generation. During a 1979 workout with the Kansas City Royals, who had selected him in the draft, Elway took grounders at third and looked as if he was born to play there. (It was his regular position in high school.) K.C. star George Brett was heard to say, "God, I hope this [bleep] plays football, because if he doesn't, I'm out of a job." Elway went on to Stanford instead. He did sign with the New York Yankees in 1981 and was paid nearly $150,000 for a summer in the minors, during which he hit .318 with four home runs and 35 RBIs in 42 games as an outfielder with the Class A Oneonta (N.Y.) Yankees. In the last four years, since he's begun concentrating on golf, Elway has gone from a seven handicap to a one. He is practically unbeatable at Ping-Pong. He has punted with success and is the Broncos' backup kicker.

But Elway was put here to throw things very hard. His grandfather Harry Elway was a semipro quarterback in Altoona, Pa. As a boy John threw so many rocks out of a neighbor's driveway in Missoula, Mont., that his father had to pop for a load of gravel for resurfacing. When John hit the sixth grade, Jack stopped tossing the baseball with him. "My hand would hurt too much to hold the martini," he laments. On one of John's first dates with Janet at Stanford, the two were throwing a football around. "Show me the heat," she said, and he broke her pinkie.

But some of the joy gradually went out of the game for Elway after he turned pro in 1983 and found himself playing under a coach whom he would grow to hate, Dan Reeves. It sounds crazy, but it wasn't until four years ago, after Reeves was fired, that the Broncos built their offense around Elway. For 12 years Denver's offense reflected Reeves's conservative philosophy. Reeves's idea of letting his hair down was to allow a running back to go out for a pass once a month.

Marino and Montana worked under Hall of Fame coaches (Don Shula and Bill Walsh, respectively) whose teams revolved around their quarterbacks. How would Elway have done with Walsh's West Coast offense? "Well," says Broncos coach Mike Shanahan, who spent three seasons as the Niners' offensive coordinator under George Seifert, Walsh's successor, "I don't believe there's a record he wouldn't own."

Since the split with Reeves, Elway's passing yards per season have increased 23%, his touchdowns have gone up 47% and his interceptions have been reduced by 24%. But the most definitive stat of Elway's career remains the record 40 times he has brought the Broncos from behind or from a tie in the fourth quarter and won the game. The stat not only shows Elway's two-sizes-too-big heart but also shows how deep a ditch he often has found himself in. "There's a reason he was always making those come-from-behind victories," says Sharpe. "We were always behind. What Reeves did, it was like making Picasso paint with a spray can."

"Man, that drains you," Elway says of all the last-minute heroics. "I hated that, always having to stay close, stay close, stay close until Dan would say, 'O.K., go ahead and win it now.' " True, it's a strategy that provided some of the NFL's best moments: the classic 98-yard drive in the final freezing two minutes to tie the 1986 AFC Championship Game at Cleveland Stadium (and the drive in overtime to win it); the 75-yard pulse-stopper to beat the Browns in the AFC title game the next year; the killer 98-yard, no-timeout, 107-second, two-fourth-downs-and-the-season-on-the-line wonder against the Houston Oilers in January 1992. "I mean it wasn't just the drive that was draining," Elway says. "I'd be pacing up and down the sideline, waiting for us to get the ball back, wondering how I was supposed to do it. Then I'd go home and just lie facedown on the couch."

Says Janet, "I saw him hide a lot of pain, but most of it was in his heart."

Elway squirmed at the end of Reeves's leash. "There'd be times when I just didn't like the play that was called," Elway says. "So I'd just let the rush come in, find a lane out and make up my own play." The metaphor for his career.

Elway has thrown to a White Pages of wideouts and tight ends in Denver—57 and counting, including five Johnsons (Barry, Butch, Jason, Reggie and Vance), nine number 85s and one of his current favorite receivers, Ed McCaffrey, who, by all rights, should be an Amway distributor by now, he's so slow. Of the 57, the most famous were the Three Amigos (Mark Jackson, Vance Johnson and Ricky Nattiel) in the late 1980s. Not one of them was over 5'11". When the Broncos broke up that fabled triumvirate in '92, all three disappeared like David Copperfield assistants. Jackson was cut by the New York Giants and then by the Indianapolis Colts. Johnson, who has caught more touchdowns from Elway than any other receiver, was released by the Minnesota Vikings and later by the San Diego Chargers. Nattiel went to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and got pink-slipped.

Do you want to know whom Elway handed off to for five years, his absolute No. 1 go-to running back for all that time? Sammy Winder. Montana was handing off to Roger Craig, and Elway was handing off to Sammy Winder. It did not take Vince Lombardi to understand how to beat Denver: Send everybody, up to and including the comptroller's wife, after Elway. And still Elway could not be beaten—until Super Bowl week.

O.K., O.K., the Super Bowl thing. The world loves to point to the bad endings, the Broncos' three crushing Super Bowl losses, but the fact that Elway has been to three is preposterous in itself. "Nobody but John Elway could've taken those three teams to the Super Bowl," says Shanahan. To this day Elway has never watched a replay of any of his Super Bowls...and no wonder. Denver was thumped by the Giants 39-20 in 1987, by the Washington Redskins 42-10 in '88 and by the 49ers 55-10 in '90. "It hurts too much," he says.

Elway doesn't have to hide the razor blades and the rope when he thinks of those losses. He doesn't blame himself. "I'm just a cog in a machine," he says. "I'm not the machine. You can have a fan belt that works terrific, but if the engine's broken, it's not going to run. Besides, there's something to be said for getting to three Super Bowls. How many guys never even got there? If I never win one, it's not the end of the world. I know I did everything I could possibly do."

This year—this gleeful year for Elway—is different. For the first time he may end up not taking a team to the Super Bowl but going with one. He is handing off to the NFL's leading rusher, Terrell Davis. He is throwing to two Pro Bowl sets of hands, those of Sharpe and wideout Anthony Miller, two men who, remarkably, are actually bigger than Eddie Gaedel. He is setting up behind one of the finest lines in football, anchored by Pro Bowl tackle Gary Zimmerman. It must take all of Elway's willpower not to come to the line grinning. "This is so great now," he says, beaming. "Before, I'd go into a game just dreading it."

With his quiver finally full of arrows, Elway is having his sharpest all-around season. Admit it, none of us thought he would be a good old quarterback. We figured that howitzer arm or those Energizer legs would be gone by now, and his sandlot shtick would be over. But he's more of a technician than anybody' thought. He can be Montana if he wants—checking options 1, 2 and 3 and then dumping—or he can still be 23 years old, the human escape clause, leaving a trail of panting defensive ends in his wake and then throwing the ball from here to February. If he is not the league's MVP—most versatile, most volatile, most valuable player—then they should melt the trophy into a hubcap.

The joy is back. On Dec. 1, long after Denver had skunked the Seattle Seahawks 34-7 to win the AFC West title and home field advantage through the AFC playoffs, he went back out to the dimly lit Mile High Stadium field and saw about 15 kids playing football. Naturally he played too. On a bad hamstring.

[G_Money]

But it wasn't just Reeves's departure that put him in his current mood. Elway had to learn how to be happy. He was thrown too early into the klieg lights and was burned. Who can forget his rookie year, when he lined up to take the snap behind guard Tom Glassic? He couldn't have known how starved Denver was for a megastar. It nearly killed this one in the crib. There was, for instance, "The Elway Watch"—the daily column that ran in the Denver Post that first training camp. As the Broncos beat writer for the Post at the time, I found myself writing the sentence, "Elway didn't eat his peas at lunch." There were news bulletins about his getting a haircut, a piece about what kind of candy he gave out at Halloween (Reese's peanut butter cups). Bartenders breathlessly called radio stations to report that Elway had left them only a buck tip. On the field Reeves was strangling Elway, and off it the city was. "There were times when he really wanted out of here," says Janet. But when he finally asked for a break, publicly saying in 1989 that he was being suffocated, he learned to stop fighting the town's infatuation with him. In 1991 he opened the first of his seven car dealerships in the Denver area, and in his commercials he gave the locals offbeat looks at him that fed their Elway jones.

These days, against all logic, Elway seems to be getting younger. Look at the great quarterback class of 1983: Elway went first in the draft, then Todd Blackledge, Jim Kelly, Tony Eason, Ken O'Brien and Marino. Blackledge has been a broadcaster for five years. Eason was gone from the league by '91, O'Brien by '94. Somebody should check the warranty on Kelly, because the parts are wearing out. It seems that every week Marino is being fit for some new orthopedic shoe popular at the Shady Rest Nursing Home. Elway, meanwhile, has missed a total of 10 games in 14 years because of injury.

He has played through rotator-cuff tears, elbow sprains, finger sprains, knee sprains, a fractured rib, groin pulls, hamstring pulls, turf toe, turf burn, bruised biceps, bruised thighs, a bruised butt that stayed technicolor for four weeks, five knee scopes, irritations of the heel, irritations of the psyche and a swollen elbow bursa sac that for an entire season stung every time he threw the ball. When it was finally removed, it was the Spruce Goose of bursa sacs, measuring eight inches in circumference.



Even curiouser, Elway has only gotten stronger. In one late-November week this year, he set three personal weightlifting records (for one, he bench-pressed 275 four times) and one team conditioning record (25 minutes on the StairMaster at a setting of 18 out of 20). On the Friday before the bye week this season, when most of the Broncos were scattered across the country, there was one guy in the workout room soaked with sweat: Elway. Imagine that. A car dealer you can trust.

He is down to 211 pounds, which is within about 10 pounds of his rookie weight. So maybe it's not so mind-warping that in October he had statistically the finest month of his career. Or that the two best rushing days of his life have come this season. Or that Elias Sports Bureau stats chief Steve Hirdt says that if Elway stays healthy and with Shanahan, "he could conceivably own every major passing record there is before he's through."

Elway's goal has always been to be "the best quarterback ever to play the game." How's he doing? "I'm playing better football than I've ever played. Maybe I'll never get there statistically because of my first 10 years, but if I can be the best now, the best this year, one of the best to ever play, that would work too."

Sports is funny that way. After so many years, Yankees manager Joe Torre finally got the chance he deserved and the championship he deserved, and now Elway is getting the coach he deserves, the team he deserves and the chance he wants so badly, the chance at healing an old wound. Now Janet prays, "Please, God, if we can't win the Super Bowl, let us lose in the playoffs."

If Denver wins it all, Janet thinks John will retire. John grins that lopsided grin of his and says, "I'd love to have to cross that bridge. Oh, man, I'd love it."

When he's finally gone, goose bumps will be at an alltime low. The other day, as Elway was getting ready to head to Mile High, he asked his seven-year-old son, Jack, if he was going to come to the game and see his dad play. Jack began listing all the things he needed to do that day: play soccer, play basketball, play Nintendo, etc.

Elway sighed and said, "You know, Dad's not going to be playing football forever. You ought to come and watch while you can."

Sounds like excellent advice.

[Buff]

Rick Reilly is a god... Great article as usual.

But G, I take issue with that being the best article he's ever written... The best article he ever wrote came out on my birthday in 1999-- http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1015936/index.htm

This print version is better because instead of brackets, the words were actually crossed out with a line through them...

[chazoe60]

anyone else get goosebumps from reading those articles? I like Rick Reiley, but I friggin love John Elway

Edit:How arrogant do I look. I high fived my own post just to see if I could. Now I look like the ass that I truly am.

[Dean]

John Elway is an all-pro in a lot of different areas. He did and does what's right. People knew when the fourth quarter came around he would do what needed to be done. His team mates knew that they were never out of any game. When #7 retired he had made come backs to win more that any previous QB.

No matter who you are or what you do in life simply do what's right. The idea seems corney but that's the highest mark a man can reach.

[Superchop 7]

My favorite article of his was on the Rockies, if your a fan of his, you know which one.

Great writer.

[Den21vsBal19]

Thanks for the articles.....................it's great to see things that pre-dated the interwebby :salute:

[WARHORSE]

Great stuff, brought tears to my eyes.


I didnt cry, but it got real misty in here and the plants were blurry and droopy.


:Cry:




Wheres Beef when I need him?


lol................

[BeefStew25]

War, I am trying to be nice about this thread....

Elway made his wife look like an idiot when he constantly womanized

Okay, yeah, good story.

[BroncoJoe]

anyone else get goosebumps from reading those articles? I like Rick Reiley, but I friggin love John Elway

Edit:How arrogant do I look. I high fived my own post just to see if I could. Now I look like the ass that I truly am.

There is the option to remove your high five...

Great articles, btw.

[Cutler5280]

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3930609

that was a great story

[WARHORSE]

War, I am trying to be nice about this thread....

Elway made his wife look like an idiot when he constantly womanized

Okay, yeah, good story.



But the kid Beef.............the KID!!!!



:Cry::Cry::Cry:

[BeefStew25]

But the kid Beef.............the KID!!!!



:Cry::Cry::Cry:

Oh, that was a nice story.

ANother nice story would have been how #7 didn't stick it in every warm hole while married to Janet.

[Broncospsycho77]

My 10 year old self followed John Elway around for like 7 holes of a Pro-Am to nab his auto. I would've gotten it earlier, but some little demon child hopped in front of me and shoved a hat into his face before I could politely ask for his auto... but still, he even took a pic with some dude at a later hole (though he obviously didn't want to... he gave some sarcastic remark before taking the picture, but did it anyway). I got the autograph right after that... and then soon after slammed a 300+ yard drive right into the deep stuff. Great man.

[West]

I've never had tears come to my eyes after reading something over the internet but that story got me. Trully remarkable. :beer:

[BeefStew25]

This is how we feel about Walter Payton.