Quiet Strength (5 page)

Minneapolis was closer to Jackson than Southern Cal—but not too close. And the city seemed to be home to a large number of Fortune 500 companies. Although I wasn’t sure what line of work I would end up in, I figured that an education, plus summers spent working for some of those companies, would yield lifelong dividends.

At Minnesota, I could play both basketball and football, which wasn’t possible at most of the other schools I was looking at. Playing more than one sport was a fairly new thing at the time, although Quinn Buckner had done it at Indiana University during my senior year of high school. He had been named the Chicago High School Player of the Year in both football and basketball, and he continued in both sports at IU. I thought I would like to play both as well, and Minnesota was one of the few schools that was open to the idea of their quarterback also playing basketball.

Woody Widenhofer was the best recruiter I had ever seen. He attended almost every one of my basketball games my senior year, and we became lifelong friends. But shortly after I signed with Minnesota, Coach Widenhofer resigned and joined the Pittsburgh Steelers. Tom Moore stayed at Minnesota as the quarterbacks coach, and it was from him that I learned the same offense we run together in Indianapolis today. It was a perfect fit for me and my skills because it allowed me to call much of the game and think while I was out on the field.

Coach Cal Stoll at Minnesota was one of the first CEO-type coaches. Most of the coaches I had seen previously, such as Coach Driscoll, coached either the offense or the defense in addition to performing the duties of a head coach. Coach Stoll did not. He wasn’t one of those tower-type coaches like Bear Bryant at Alabama, who was far removed from the field. Coach Stoll, like Coach Daugherty had done at Michigan State, hired great teachers as his assistants and then gave them the latitude to coach. He set the vision and direction, motivated the team, and then let the assistant coaches do the coaching.

Coach Stoll held a meeting with the freshmen every year. During the course of our meeting, he asked, “Every one of you thinks you are going to play in the
NFL
, right?” Every head in the room nodded. He pulled out a photograph of the freshman team from five years prior. The guys who made it to the
NFL
were circled.

“Him. And him,” he said, pointing to the picture. “Two of them made it. Out of thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-five, whatever we’ve got this year, one of you will go on to play in the
NFL
. Or if you’re lucky, two. You’re going to have to outwork everybody in this room and then catch a break in order to make your living in the
NFL
.”

Of course, we each thought we were going to be that one, but I must admit, this did make an impression. Coach Stoll went on to talk about our education and preparing for the rest of our lives—lives without football. Since I was just days removed from my parents’ home, that message resonated with me.

He continued, “Success is uncommon and not to be enjoyed by the common man. I’m looking for uncommon people because we want to be successful, not average.”

Listening to Coach Stoll, I knew I had a greater chance of becoming uncommon by my efforts than I did by my natural gifts. Some players are uncommon because of their God-given natural abilities, like being blessed with the height of Yao Ming or the vertical jump of Michael Jordan. Others have to work to become uncommon. Steve Kerr of the Chicago Bulls shot five hundred free throws a day to make himself uncommon.

The truth is that most people have a better chance to be uncommon by effort than by natural gifts. Anyone
could
give that effort in his or her chosen endeavor, but the typical person doesn’t, choosing to do only enough to get by.

That lesson was still fresh in my mind a few weeks later when we took the field in Columbus for Minnesota’s season opener against Ohio State. As we warmed up, Coach Stoll assured us that we could win even though we were heavy underdogs. After a few minutes, the Ohio State players emerged to a big roar from the crowd. I turned to Larry Powell, a highly touted freshman running back, and proclaimed, “Powell, we can get these guys. Look at ’em. They’re not as big as I thought they’d be.”

Five minutes later, Ohio State’s offensive and defensive linemen came out of the tunnel to join the rest of the team, and I realized that those initial fifty guys were only their skill-position players.

Larry turned to me and spoke slowly, drawing out every word. “Tony … I don’t know how we’re going to do today.”

The halftime score was 35–7, on the way to a final of 56–7, Ohio State. Coach Stoll calmly confessed after the game that he didn’t have a speech for that situation.

So much for my spectacular introduction to college football. I did get in the game for a few plays toward the end, but most people were watching an Ohio State sophomore running back who started making history that day. Archie Griffin began his thirty-one-game streak with at least one hundred yards rushing in each game. Incidentally, his last game in that streak also came against us, in 1975—my junior year.

I got hurt late in my sophomore year of football, and that caused me to give up basketball after only one season. It was actually a good decision; the demands of playing both sports at a high level while keeping up academically were really more than I could handle.

Although most of my college football memories are positive, some of the clearest include close losses in games that we had a chance to win—later games against Ohio State and Michigan immediately come to mind. In addition, it was during these years that I realized I needed to make some decisions about my own personal values.

Like most underclassmen, I wanted to fit in. Many of the guys I played football with went out for a few beers at night or went to campus parties, which always included drugs and alcohol. Throughout high school I had never known anyone—anyone, that is, who was an athlete or serious about taking care of his body—who drank, smoked, or took drugs. No one I respected, anyway.

That changed at the University of Minnesota. There, guys who were performing at very high levels athletically also drank, smoked, and used various illegal drugs. Some coaches from other sports knew about it and even encouraged players to take their recruits to area bars.

At that point, I was forced to rethink my stance on drinking and drugs and make a decision that wasn’t necessarily performance based. Up until then, my primary reason for not drinking and doing drugs was that it would hurt my performance—my dad’s slides of those cigarette-smoking lab rats had never left my mind. Once the decision moved to a moral ground, however, I still came out at the same place.

What would my mom and dad think?
always went through my mind whenever I had the opportunity to take a drink or smoke a cigarette. I had been taught that smoking and drinking were not right for us as a family, and illegal drugs—well, they were illegal. Therefore, they were not for me. But this was a test, because I saw that great athletes could drink and do drugs and get away with it—for a while.

I still hung out with all the guys and went to parties, but I never did smoke, drink, or take any drugs. And the more I was around those things, the more I understood why my decision was a smart one.

Wisconsin is a big rival for Minnesota. Even today, Big Ten alums in our Colts locker room laugh about the rivalry games in the conference. It seems that each week, the teams are playing for something: the Old Oaken Bucket (Purdue–Indiana), the Little Brown Jug (Minnesota–Michigan), the Illibuck (Illinois–Ohio State), the Governor’s Victory Bell (Minnesota–Penn State), the Heartland Trophy (Iowa–Wisconsin), the Paul Bunyan Governor’s Trophy (Michigan–Michigan State), or a bronze pig called the Floyd of Rosedale (Minnesota–Iowa). If somebody’s not handing something over after a game, it just doesn’t seem like a Big Ten game. The Minnesota–Wisconsin game is the longest-running rivalry game, dating back to 1890. The winner gets Paul Bunyan’s Axe.

My junior year, we were playing Wisconsin at home in Minneapolis. The weather all week had been awful, with heavy snow in the middle of the week. I told my folks not to bother trying to make the trip, but by Saturday the weather was perfect, with clear blue skies and the bracing Minnesota cold of late November. It was around thirty degrees, and the snow that had been cleared off the field was piled four feet high along the benches. Wisconsin had trounced us the year before in Madison, and we had some guys from Madison on our team who badly wanted to win. In addition, this was our last game of the year, and we wanted to send our seniors out with a victory. It was an emotional game for us.

As we got into the game, we found we could run at will against them. From the opening kickoff, we could just
feel
that we were going to win. On the opening drive, we took the ball and gashed their defense all the way down the field with our running game. But I knew I only needed one touchdown pass to set the Big Ten record. So on first down and goal from their seven yard line, I changed the play at the line of scrimmage from a run to a pass. As I was releasing the ball, my arm got hit, and my pass was intercepted in the end zone. When I came off the field, our offensive line coach, Roger French, was there to meet me. “I am so mad,” he shouted at me. “If I had a gun, I would shoot you right now!”

I was glad he was unarmed.

Coach French later went to Brigham Young University and coordinated some explosive passing offenses, but that day—understandably—he wanted to run the ball. Thankfully, our running backs stayed hot, the offensive line controlled the line of scrimmage, and we dominated Wisconsin with the run, winning 24–3. I even threw that touchdown pass to set the record. And we were happy to have Wisconsin hand over Paul Bunyan’s Axe.

When I arrived in Minneapolis in the summer of 1973, I was eager to start learning the no-huddle offense from Coach Tom Moore as soon as possible. I also wanted to familiarize myself with the campus and begin a summer job.

The school lined me up with a position at a meatpacking plant called Feinberg’s. It was within walking distance from where I was living—about fifteen blocks—which was ideal because I didn’t have a car. My shift started at 6 a.m., which gave me time in the afternoon to work out and spend time learning the offense with Tom.

There were two minor difficulties with the meatpacking job. First, I had never worked so hard in my life, before or since. Second, I always seemed to have stray dogs following me from work to the university’s football offices. I didn’t feel like I was in danger of being attacked, but it took me about three days to figure out what was attracting them—the smell of pastrami.

I stuck with that job all summer, remembering what my dad had taught me about learning from every experience. I definitely learned one thing—I never wanted to work in a meatpacking plant again. It made me value my football scholarship and free college education much more. After that summer, I found jobs on my own, without the university’s assistance. No more meatpacking.

The summer after my freshman year, I had a great job working for Cargill on a research farm in Elk River, just north of Minneapolis. I would pick up three inner-city high school boys and drive them to the farm, where we helped with some of the research projects. Despite the early schedule—we had to be there at 7 a.m., meaning we left around 6 a.m.—I really enjoyed it. The farm tested different types of animal feeds. We would measure the amount of food that was given and what was left over (in the troughs, thankfully) and weigh the animals periodically, among other tasks. We all found it fascinating. I got to know the high school boys through our conversations on the way
to
the farm since we were usually too tired to talk on the way back. It was one of the first times I really understood that not everyone had a dad at home.

In my third year, I hit the jackpot, landing one of those office jobs I had always heard about—an internship with General Mills. Our team was introducing a new cereal, Golden Grahams, into the national market by testing it in three or four cities and creating an advertising campaign. It was like being on
The Apprentice
—without the worry of getting fired. I finally felt like I was putting my business courses to good use. But I also realized that neckties and I were not compatible. I still get a headache if I wear a tie for more than fifteen minutes.

By my senior year, my reputation as a football player was building, and the jobs were a little easier to find. I was much better at avoiding early mornings, farm animals, meat-rending machines, and ties. That summer I worked in the sporting goods department of Dayton Hudson’s flagship department store in downtown Minneapolis. Right before the season started, the
Minneapolis Tribune
ran a preseason Big Ten section with a story about me, along with my photo. With my huge afro and suit, I looked as if I had just walked off the stage from a Sly and the Family Stone gig. The caption asked, “Would you buy a tennis racket from this man?”

Probably a fair question.

In the end, I carved out a pretty nice college football career under Coaches Stoll and Moore at Minnesota. I graduated as fourth all-time in total offense in the Big Ten, a two-time team Most Valuable Player, and captain my senior year. I was also a two-time Academic All–Big Ten, all the while having a blast running our innovative offense.

We played Illinois my senior year, and they executed very sophisticated schemes on defense, requiring me to make adjustments during the game: “If you see this alignment, we’re getting into this formation,” and so forth, as Tom Moore had instructed me. We won the game, 29–14, and afterward, their head coach, Bob Blackman, congratulated me for the work I had done orchestrating our offense. That meant a lot to me coming from him, because the intricacies of their defense were specifically designed to confuse the quarterback.

As a result of my on-field performance in college, there was no doubt in my mind that I would be drafted and go on to a career as a quarterback in the
NFL
. I had worked out for scouts and coaches from a number of teams, including the Washington Redskins, who said they would be looking for a third quarterback and that I fit the bill. Some friends thought I might go to the Vikings since my style was so similar to that of Fran Tarkenton, their quarterback at the time.