 |
| |||
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE |  |
Last Call Once labeled a spoiled brat who couldn't win the big one, John Elway closed out his Hall of Fame NFL career in triumph -- and on his own termsBy Michael Silver
The end, fittingly, came on a broken play. It was just after midnight on the morning of April 13 when John Elway sat in the bar of his Englewood, Colo., home with his dad, Jack, and finalized his decision to terminate one of the most remarkable careers in NFL history. "So this is it," the son said to the father, and the two men summoned John's wife, Janet, into the room. Now the only thing left for John to do was tell his boss, Denver Broncos owner Pat Bowlen. As amazing as it seems in this era of pagers, portable fax machines and mobile phones, getting ahold of Bowlen wasn't easy. Bowlen was in Sydney, Australia, to promote the Broncos' American Bowl exhibition game on Aug. 8 against the San Diego Chargers, and John spent an hour futilely trying to ring his hotel. No quarterback has ever been as adept at producing greatness when forced to improvise, but John was coming up empty with this call. Finally, by using Jack's long-distance company, John got a message to Bowlen, who called back at 2 a.m. Mountain Time and said, "I assume you didn't call me in the middle of the night to tell me you're coming to Australia." They chatted amicably for 10 minutes, and when John hung up, his face was visibly relaxed. "I feel like I just got rid of a 2,000-pound load," he said, and for the next hour he and Jack sipped soft drinks and talked about old times. Then real-life drama intervened in the form of a tragedy that made Elway's 47 fourth-quarter comebacks and stirring MVP performance in his fifth and final Super Bowl in January seem trifling. Elway had planned a press conference for Wednesday, April 21, the day after Bowlen was to return to Denver, but everything changed in the wake of the horrific April 20 shooting spree at Columbine High in the Denver suburb of Littleton. With 14 students and a teacher dead, the decision to delay Elway's announcement was so obvious -- it was later rescheduled for this Sunday -- that none of the parties bothered to call one another to discuss it. "There was no need," Bowlen says. "We all just knew." Years from now, when fans recall Elway's exit, they'll remember him as the Ted Williams of football, a great player who went out in a sun-kissed blaze of glory. Yet for the Elways, John's farewell will always conjure up feelings of fear and sorrow. Janet, having driven the four Elway children to school on April 20, was listening on her car radio as a caller weighed in on her husband's future when an announcer broke in with the news. "You read about the bombings in Yugoslavia or other scary happenings around the world, and it's almost surreal," Janet told SI, "but this was so close to home. Columbine is 12 miles from our house, and a good friend of ours, who's a cop, was one of the first people to go in the library and find all those kids. It made us feel almost embarrassed about our situation and the attention it was getting. John and I were talking that night, and he held me and said, 'It just makes you take a moment to realize how blessed we are. I don't even know why I've been anguishing about this retirement decision.'" It wasn't supposed to be this difficult. A year ago, after winning his first Super Bowl in four tries, Elway announced he would return for a 16th season, which would almost certainly be his last. The victory tour had so many feel-good moments, it seemed at times to have been scripted: The Broncos flirted with an undefeated season; Elway knocked off friend and fellow legend Dan Marino of the Miami Dolphins in the AFC divisional playoffs; and then, after a choppy win over the New York Jets in the AFC Championship Game, Elway took what looked suspiciously like a sayonara lap around Mile High Stadium. The victory over the Jets sent him into a Super Bowl showdown against the Atlanta Falcons and Dan Reeves, his former coach and frequent verbal sparring partner in Denver. Reeves produced a game plan that dared Elway to beat him, and Elway responded with the game of his first-ballot Hall of Fame career, throwing for 336 yards and earning MVP honors in a 34-19 win that wasn't nearly that close. As much as he loved stinging Reeves, Elway may have derived his greatest satisfaction as he stood atop the victory stand. Two hours after the game ended, while he and Janet rode an almost empty team bus back to the Broncos' hotel, John gleefully described what it felt like to hold the Lombardi Trophy while Fox announcer Terry Bradshaw, the former Pittsburgh Steelers great and four-time Super Bowl winner, stood close by. Bradshaw had dogged Elway, dismissing him as a spoiled surfer dude after Elway leveraged the Baltimore Colts into trading him before he had played an NFL down and criticizing him again in the midst of his three Super Bowl defeats. Now, said John to Janet, "I was staring at him thinking, You can't say a bad thing about me ever again, dude." Upon leaving the cleared-out locker room on that magical night in Miami last January, John insisted on returning to the Pro Player Stadium field to pose with Janet for a photo. "We should get busy on the 50-yard line," Janet joked. "That would give them something to shoot." Then John surprised Janet by taking the family to Honolulu for the Pro Bowl, where he punctuated his lone possession with a three-yard touchdown pass to Buffalo Bills fullback Sam Gash. Later, while standing on the sideline, John noticed a fan in a Hawaiian shirt scarfing down a hot dog and thought, Hmmm, that looks good; I wonder if I can persuade a water boy to get me one. He eventually dismissed the idea but took it as a sign that he might be ready for another line of work. A year ago a sense of obligation had played an important role in Elway's decision to continue playing: With the Denver-area voters going to the polls in November to cast their ballots on a downtown stadium project, he believed he owed it to Bowlen to play another season. The measure passed. Also, Elway felt pressured by Broncos coach Mike Shanahan, who at one point showed up in Palm Desert, Calif., where the Elways were vacationing, in an attempt to learn John's intentions. This time, says Shanahan, "I tried to stay away from him and let him decide on his own." In February and March, Elway toyed with the idea of returning in an attempt to lead the Broncos to an unprecedented third consecutive Super Bowl win. Ultimately, his 38-year-old body told him, Walk away while you can. "I've had a bad left knee since high school," Elway says. "What it came down to was that, physically, I just didn't think I could do it anymore." Elway, who went into last season having missed only nine starts due to injury or illness, sat out four games in 1998 with hamstring and rib and back injuries. His most painful moment came in a Nov. 8 game against the Chargers. After taking 10 pain-killing injections for his aching ribs before kickoff, he played only one series. A few days later Elway told trainer Steve Antonopulos, "God, last week I could hardly breathe." Says Antonopulos, "He has played with so many things over the years that people don't even know about. He's as tough a football player as I've ever been around." Perhaps the most remarkable element of Elway's legacy as a champion is how much skepticism he had to overcome to achieve it. For much of his career Elway was regarded as an exceptional athlete doomed by tragic flaws. Bradshaw wasn't the only one to label Elway, a coach's son, a spoiled brat, and until 15 months ago he stood as a symbol of big-game futility. It's telling that Bowlen, when asked to name the Elway moment most imprinted in his memory, recalls a scene following the Broncos' 55-10 loss to the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XXIV: "It was our worst loss ever, and eventually I was the only one left in the locker room. I heard the shower running, and I looked in and saw John. We stared at each other for a long time, but neither one of us said a thing. There was this look in his eyes of utter dejection. I'll remember that moment until the day I die." Bowlen gets choked up for a moment and then continues: "I was the owner for 15 out of John's 16 years, and, believe me, every bit of respect he got around here, he earned. He worked his butt off every day, even in the off-season, even in his twilight years, and part of that was to set an example for his younger teammates." On Sunday, Bowlen reiterated an old offer to sell Elway a minority share of the Broncos. That's just one of the many post-football options open to Elway, who says he'll be so unnerved by Denver's season opener in September, "I'm not even sure I'll be able to watch." Elway might audition for a spot in the Monday Night Football booth, and the one handicapper will have plenty of time to fine-tune his golf game. The Broncos will defend their titles under the leadership of excitable quarterback Bubby Brister, who turns 37 in August, though some fans have suggested that Elway's ultimate successor should be his nine-year-old son, Jack. Says Janet with a laugh, "Our daughter Juju, who's eight, took those comments a little too literally. She freaked out and said, 'Does that mean Jack has to start playing for the Broncos now?'" If young Jack someday attempts to tread in his father's athletic footprints, many will say he was fed from a silver spoon. John heard the same snipings, and it's true that he benefited from his parents' affection and his father's football acumen. But the Elway bashers missed one of the central components of the equation: They weren't there with 15-year-old John when he and his father, then a Washington State assistant, boarded the team bus in Seattle after the Cougars had blown a two-touchdown lead in the final two minutes and lost to archrival Washington. "Just sit there and shut up," John remembers Jack growling as the five-hour ride began. John sat in silence, afraid even to ask for a snack, awed by the cost of competing and the price of caring. Some 23 years, 148 NFL victories and 51,475 pro passing yards later, John and Jack sat alone in a darkened room in the middle of the night, celebrating the completion of a career that exceeded their wildest dreams. It was a conversation John chooses to keep private, possibly because no one else could really appreciate what it meant to him. When they were all talked out, Jack asked John, "You want to get something to eat?" John shook his head. "Not hungry," he said, and he headed off to bed. The next morning Elway woke up smiling. "The pressure's all gone," he said to Janet. "I can't believe how happy I am." For more on Elway's career, go to www.cnnsi.com/elway. The shootings in Littleton gave John some perspective. "I don't even know why I've been anguishing about this decision," he told Janet. Issue date: May 3, 1999
|
