Elway completed 60%
of all passes thrown, for 5,711 yards and 49 touchdowns
John completed 129
out of 200 passes for 1,837 yards and 19 TD's in his senior
year
During his summers, he
threw up to 300 passes per day.
After a practice, Elway
and some teammates headed to the 35-yard line, where they
took turns trying to strike an upright with a pass. Elway
hurled two perfect strikes.
Math was his favorite
high school subject.
Coming out of Granada
Hills High, Elway was the most highly recruited athlete
in 1979. Not only did he excel in football, he was also
highly sought after in baseball.
In baseball, Elway led
his team to the Los Angles Championships with a .91 batting
average and a 4 and 2 pitching record.
Right out of high school,
Elway signed a letter of intent with Stanford University,
but the Kansas City Royals selected him in the '79 summer
draft anyway.
College:
Elway completed 62.1
percent of his career passes (774 of 1,243, both NCAA highs)
for 9,349 yards and 77 touchdowns.
He set an NCAA record
for the lowest percentage of passes intercepted in a career
(3.13 percent).
Elway was a consensus
All-American and finished second in Heisman Trophy balloting
while setting virtually every Pac-10 and Stanford career
record for total offense and passing.
John concluded his college
career with five major NCAA Division 1-A records and nine
major Pac-10 marks.
When Stanford's punter
skipped a practice, Elway filled in by "throwing" punts
that sailed as high as real ones.
In a little more than
a half, Elway completed 15 of 20 passes for 245 yards and
three TDs during Stanford's 63-9 win over Oregon State.
He hit .349 with nine
homers and 50 RBIs in 49 games in his final college baseball
season as a sophomore.
New York Yankees owner
George Steinbrenner signed Elway in the fall of his junior
year with a $150,000 bonus.
Elway played baseball
for the New York Yankees' Oneonta single-A farm club in
1982, hitting a .318 average and knocking in a team-high
24 runs with no errors in 42 games.
He was the Yankees' first
selection in the 1981 summer draft.
Elway won the Offensive
MVP honors in the East/West Shrine Game, where his father,
Jack Elway, was the head coach for the West.
He was on the losing end
of the infamous game against California in which the Stanford
band charged the field, allowing the Bears to return a kickoff
all the way as time ran out.
Elway graduated from Stanford
with a degree in economics and a 3.0 GPA.
Miscellaneous:
Elway receives about 40,000
autograph requests a year.
In his first football
game, Elway ran for six touchdowns in the first half. He
was in the fourth grade.
As a ninth-grader, Elway
caught the eye of Cougars coach George Raveling at Washington
State's basketball camp. George said if John was going into
football, he was going into the wrong sport.
Before Super Bowl XXI,
Raveling fired off a telegram to Elway: "Dear Shotgun: I
still think you should've played basketball."
Jack Elway had to convince
his son to play quarterback instead of halfback during John's
Pop Warner days.
After his disastrous rookie
season, Elway headed back to California, where he married
Janet, who said he was so dejected he even mentioned quitting
the NFL.
Janet set an American
record of 4:52.95 for the 400-meter individual medley in
a 25-meter pool during her junior year of high school in
Tacoma, Wash.
Elway has been playing
without an anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.
He completely tore the ligament while making a cut during
a high school football game.
He could bench-press 275
pounds four times, which is the equivalent of lifting 350
pounds once.
In 1987, following threats
on Elway's life, 12 police officers were stationed behind
Denver's bench. Seven accompanied him off the field.
In 1996, Elway and Jeff
Hostetler chatted on the Internet in preparation for a Monday
night game. Reeves was on their minds, even in cyberspace:
"Preparing for you this weekend, our defense decided to
bring in Dan Reeves as a consultant," said Hostetler, who
didn't re-sign with the Giants after Reeves became coach
in 1993. "We figure he did such a good job of holding you
down before, he could do it again."
One of Elway's favorite
authors: Tom Clancy.
His favorite golfer: Greg
Norman.
His favorite actors: John
Wayne and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Elway puts a lot of time
into his charity, The Elway Foundation, which he started
in 1987.
