Ever-scrambling, Young never lost his oddball cool

C.W. NEVIUS

STEVE YOUNG once played professional football in a league so strapped for cash that the coach asked players to bunk with teammates' parents on road trips. In college at BYU, he swears he was originally buried so deep on the depth chart that a chance to run the JV team was a promotion.

Once he became a college All-American, he lost out on the Heisman Trophy in what, in retrospect, clearly looks like a mistake. Once he finally made it to the NFL, he not only was stuck on the roster of what may be the most historically inept franchise in recent history, Tampa Bay, but after less than two years the Bucs made it clear they didn't want him. At that point, Young says, he seriously considered giving up the game and practicing law.

And then came the tough part.

In 1987, Young left Tampa Bay to take the job you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy: replacing Joe Montana as the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers. Talk about getting set up to fail. The point we're trying to make is that, as acclaimed as he is today, Young didn't exactly spend his entire career making witty television commercials and throwing record- breaking touchdown passes. It was an unpleasant slog for much of the time, and some of the breaks were frankly not only unfortunate but unfair.

Yet he took the guff, the knocks and the second-guessing, and he responded with good humor, intelligence and class. It probably shouldn't be a surprise that he held onto the idea of playing long after his friends and advisers told him it would be too hard and unpleasant to continue. How, he must have been wondering as he pondered their cautionary words, is this any different from what happened up until now?

From the moment he pulled on a 49ers' helmet, it was clear that Young couldn't have been any less like Montana. Montana was lithe and graceful. Young was burly and full-tilt. Montana was shy and cool. Young was not only clever and verbal, he had one sideline blowup so vociferous that his mother, who evidently can read lips, called to threaten to wash his mouth out with soap.

For a long time people thought their differences were why he could never take Joe's place. Now it is hard to imagine that anyone could have done it so well.

Because, surprisingly, it all worked out, right down the line. Young not only won over the team, and the fans, he was the MVP of Super Bowl XXIX. Today, he has earned the ultimate tribute. Who, we are wondering in the Bay Area, will ever be able to fill Steve Young's shoes?

NOT A TYPICAL JOCK

One thing is sure, reporters will miss him. Young has been not only one of the most intelligent athletes in professional sports, he has been willing to share candid stories about himself, even if they featured him as the punch line.

After the Super Bowl win he wrote a book for fourth-graders called, ``Forever Young,'' to make the point that he saw himself as a typically awkward kid in school. Once, when asked what he was like as a kid, Young said he was ``the kid in the back of the room twirling his hair in his fingers.''

Nor do you get the impression his parents expected him to turn into a Pro Bowl quarterback. His father, Grit, always set a high standard, but Young says his mother could be a little overprotective when she saw her little boy playing football.

When he was little, Young swept the end with the ball when, as he recalls, ``a player from the Belhaven Buzzards tackled me illegally by the neck and dazed me.'' As he stayed on the ground trying to catch his breath, he was horrified to see his mother running toward him out of the stands. His greatest fear was that she was going to give him a big hug, but instead she ran over to the other team and grabbed the kid who tackled him.

``Don't neck-tackle!'' she ordered, giving her son a story he often tells on the banquet circuit.

Young grew up to be, in the nicest sense of the word, a geek. With the 49ers he sometimes wore sandals with socks on road trips, and his collection of wrinkled shirts and jeans are legendary. For years, although he was wealthy from the day he signed his first USFL contract, he never owned a new car, preferring to buy a used one from one of his friends when they were getting ready to trade it in.

He was not a typical jock in many ways. He was not only among the first athletes to embrace the Internet, he finagled a way to get one of the first high-speed access lines in his neighborhood. He hit law school during the offseason, and although he still has not passed the bar, he has his degree.

He doesn't sermonize, but Young also is deeply committed to the Mormon faith. Not that it has stopped him from having a good time: In high school, he recalls, he would go to parties where there would be contests to see who could drink a glass of beer fastest. Young would participate, but he would drink a glass of milk.

In the 49ers' locker room, Young was always the best choice to discuss politics, current events, movies and books. Once, at an informal dinner with some sportswriters, almost the entire evening was spent reviewing recent books on expeditions into Antarctica. Try that topic on Dan Marino.

HIGH HURDLES

In fact, Young has so many other interests that he always seemed to be begging the question of why he was putting so much time into a game that was originally played with an inflated pig's bladder.

The answer, simply, was that he got a kick out of the game. Just last year, Young strolled off the practice field at the preseason training camp, his shirt soaked with sweat, and began a casual conversation with a reporter who happened by.

``This stuff gets old,'' he said, gesturing to the practice field and referring to the two-a-day workouts. ``But the challenges of the game still intrigue me.''

He's certainly had plenty of challenges. They began when he arrived at BYU from Greenwich, Conn. There wasn't much pressure. He not only was the great, great, great grandson of Brigham Young, the Mormon leader who led his followers to settle in Salt Lake, but when he became the starting quarterback he was replacing the legendary Jim McMahon.

Young flourished in the pass-happy BYU offense, although there already were questions about whether he was a running back playing quarterback. Although he was a consensus All-American and passed for more than 3,900 yards in his senior season, he finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting to Nebraska's Mike Rozier in 1983.

There was plenty of interest from the NFL, but the USFL was just getting started, and the new league's idea was to follow Al Davis' strategy when he was putting the AFL together -- grab the quarterbacks.

When an agreement could not be reached with the Cincinnati Bengals, Young signed what was then considered an outrageously lucrative contract -- worth about $42 million -- with the Los Angeles Express.

That may have made it sound as if the USFL had plenty of money, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Young only played with the Express for a season and a half, but he got a lifetime of stories from the experience.

There was the time the charter bus driver would not budge until he was paid -- and he meant in cash, not a check. Or the time head coach John Hadl planned a road trip according to who had family in the destination city. Young recalls Hadl pointing to a wide receiver and asking, ``OK, so your mother can take four guys?''

Getting out of the USFL was clearly a priority, and it looked like Young had made a great transition when he signed with Tampa Bay. He soon learned that he was in a new league but not necessarily a better situation.

Later he would talk about ``racial fights in the locker room,'' and ``guys backstabbing each other.'' Head coach Ray Perkins was under such intense pressure that a player who was on the team later said, ``You could say, `Hi, Ray,' and he'd say, `What do you mean by that?' ''

Young was running for his life during games, the Bucs were losing, and Perkins soon decided that a new quarterback was needed. With a top draft pick, the Tampa bosses made it clear they intended to pick Heisman winner Vinny Testaverde and put Young on the trade block.

Four days before the 1987 draft, Young was traded to the 49ers for a draft choice in each the second and fourth rounds. It was his third team, and second professional league, in four wasted years.

FROM DOG TO GODSEND

To say Young was not an immediate hit with the 49ers is an understatement. He not only was resented by the fans, but by Montana, who thought (correctly) that coach Bill Walsh believed Montana was breaking down physically. Montana had missed half of the 1986 season with a back injury, and there was considerable debate about whether he would ever play again.

But Walsh was wrong, and Montana came back to play five productive seasons. Young got a few chances but often lived down to the fans' expectations, throwing passes into coverage and taking a quick look downfield before taking off and running.

During that period, an Atlanta coach gave Young the classic example of faint praise, calling him ``a fine runner who can pass if he has to.'' Young was so discouraged that he refused to cash his salary checks, putting them in a drawer in his bedroom because he felt he wasn't earning them.

Today he admits ``I had to unlearn a lot of bad habits. At Tampa Bay I was just running around trying to make something happen.''

However, he had a couple of advantages. The first was Walsh, the quarterback guru, who believed in him, and the second was assistant Mike Holmgren, who was with Young at BYU. Holmgren stuck with Young through the tough times, and in all that waiting, there were more than a few.

``If I had known it would be five years,'' Young said at one point, ``I might have gone somewhere else. Still, I had the best coach and the best system, and I got to watch the master (Montana). So it all worked out.''

In 1991, Montana had to have elbow surgery and Young finally became the starter. Although he led the league in passing efficiency, the 49er Faithful was not easily won over. When the 49ers finished out of the playoffs for the first time since 1982, a bumper sticker appeared: ``Montana isn't young, and Young isn't Montana.''

Then, the next year, in 1992, it all seemed to fall into place. Everyone noticed the change. Teammate Tom Rathman talked about how Young was ``a lot more calm, right on top of it.'' Young was named Most Valuable Player and led all the quarterback rankings. He not only led the team to a 14-2 record, he rallied them for five wins in the fourth quarter when the 49ers were either trailing or tied. It was almost like old you-know-who.

From then on, the only complaint about Young was that although he racked up the yardage and awards, he hadn't won the big one. At the end of the 1994 season, he did just that.

Standing in the huddle on the field at Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami, ready to call the first pass play in Super Bowl XXIX, a little debate broke out. Smoke from pregame fireworks was still hanging over the field and Young's buddy, celebrated worrywart and offensive tackle Harris Barton, was afraid it was too smoky to run the long pass they had called.

``Aw,'' Young said, ``let's open with a bang.''

Jerry Rice caught the pass in stride, took it 44 yards for a touchdown, and Young and the 49ers were on the way to their Super Bowl win. As the clock clicked down in the fourth quarter, a camera caught Young on the sideline saying, gleefully, ``Somebody take this monkey off my back.''

Young gave all the interviews and seemed to be handling the victory in stride, but when he reached the hotel after the game he felt so light- headed that an ambulance was called. Young was rushed to the hospital where he was found to be seriously dehydrated. So he spent the Super Bowl celebration in a hospital bed.

HEAD GAMES, A ROUGH EXIT

By the next year it seemed Young finally was getting his chance to shine, but there were changes in the game, and it affected the 49ers deeply. The salary cap made it impossible to stockpile the best players, and among the positions affected was the offensive line.

The year after the Super Bowl win, Young took a terrible pounding. Against Indianapolis he was sacked six times and suffered a separated shoulder that would require surgery. And that was just the start.

The troubling series of concussions began the next year, in 1996, and they followed one after another for the rest of his career. When we look back on it, we may say that Young is the professional athlete who made us realize that there was more to a concussion than ``getting your bell rung,'' that it was a serious medical condition.

Still, although he knew the dangers better than anyone, Young fought the idea of leaving the game. He bristled at well-intentioned advice from friends, and tried to play down the risk and the effect of subsequent concussions.

Again everyone wondered why he was clinging to the sport. He was full of plans off the field. He spoke of setting up a legal team that would do charitable work, especially in the field of child abuse. He had an idea of using money from his foundation to help build schools in South America. He was active in venture investment for computer models.

And, in an announcement that made the front page, after years as America's most eligible bachelor jock, he married Barbara Graham in April and took an around-the-world honeymoon. The couple already is said to be expecting its first child. He even has a potential career as a television analyst.

Eventually, Young left the game with the greatest of regret. It doesn't seem fair. He spent so much time getting to the mountaintop -- including the USFL, Tampa and the stint as Montana's caddy it was 11 years -- that you'd think he'd get a little more time to enjoy the view.

But, apparently, that's not how it works out. You don't get to pick your exit scene, just the way you say goodbye. Young probably is disappointed, but in making his farewell he has shown class and dignity -- exactly as he always has. He will be missed by anyone who enjoys the game and believes that its stars should set an example in the way they play and live.

Now, can his wife, Barbara, do something about those clothes?