QUARTERBACK WHO ONCE SANK ELWAY NOW JUST DOES SINKS

In the autumn of 1978, three future professional football players--John Elway, Tom Ramsey and Jay Schroeder--were quarterbacks for Los Angeles City Section high school teams.

All were successful and heavily recruited. And all played for teams that lost to San Fernando, whose quarterback was Stephen Jones.

They had one other thing in common. None of them was named to the All-City first team.

Stephen Jones was.

Elway, of course, is now starting for the Denver Broncos. The Granada Hills graduate was an All-American at Stanford. Schroeder, formerly of Palisades, backs up Joe Theismann for the Washington Redskins. And Ramsey, formerly of Kennedy High, was a Rose Bowl MVP for UCLA in 1983.

And Jones?

He’s a plumber.

Jones was not blessed with great size, dazzling statistics or extraordinary speed, so the 5-10, 155-pound athlete was not recruited to play quarterback in college. He played wide receiver for 1 1/2 seasons at the University of Colorado before quitting school and joining Local 78 of the plumbers’ union in Los Angeles.

He participated in a tryout for Canadian Football League teams a few years ago in Orange County, he said, but “I ran a 4.7 (40-yard dash) and they said, ‘See you later.’ ”

So, he went back under the sink, but not grudgingly.

He’s the first to admit that it doesn’t compare with playing in the National Football League, but Jones says he enjoys the physical labor. And at $21 an hour, he makes about $40,000 a year, so he’s doing all right financially.

“I’m not complaining,” he said last week, sitting in the Inglewood apartment he shares with his wife of 11 months, the former Maria Hamilton, and their 3 1/2-month-old daughter, Brianna. “I could be doing better, but I’m patient. I’m an easygoing guy. I love my wife and I love my daughter. I’m doing OK.”

His wife was hired recently by United Airlines, so Jones, 24, plans to do some traveling.

“I love to fish,” he said.

He hopes to make Cancun and Alaska his first two stops.

All in all, Jones said, it’s a pretty good life.

Still, there are times when he can’t help wondering.

“I’m a sports fanatic,” he said. “I love watching sports, and every time I turn on the TV, I see somebody I know or have played against. I think, ‘I could be out there playing.’ . . .

“It still hurts, obviously, watching these guys play and do so well, but I like to see them play. I wish them all the best in the world.”

It helps to know that at one time he competed on their level.

“It says something about my ability that I was the top-ranked quarterback of my day,” he said.

He has his memories. And, some day, he’ll have some interesting stories to tell his grandchildren.

Jones’ passing statistics didn’t compare with Elway’s or Ramsey’s, although he averaged 22.8 yards per completion and almost a third of his 46 completions went for touchdowns. In 11 games in 1978, Jones passed for 1,050 yards and 15 touchdowns.

But his passing was a bonus. His greatest asset was his ability to run the Tigers’ high-powered wishbone offense. Jones, whose parents lived in the Crenshaw district, lived in Lakeview Terrace with San Fernando Coach Bill Marsh. The coach’s wife, Debra, is Jones’ cousin.

Jones and Marsh watched films almost constantly, and eventually Jones got to know the offense inside and out.

Jones called his own plays, often changing his original call and audibilizing at the line of scrimmage.

Said Marsh: “He was running the whole show out on the field--to the point that very, very few times would I call a play for him.”

With Jones at the controls, the Tiger offense ran like a machine. In a 62-6 rout of Van Nuys, San Fernando racked up 688 total yards, including a City-record 525 on the ground. In nine regular-season games, the Tigers rushed for 3,125 yards. Some teams go an entire season without rushing for 347 yards in a single game. For San Fernando, that was an average night.

Jones had some talented teammates--halfback Anthony Gibson, fullback Robert McClanahan and tight end Malcolm Moore later played for USC--but it was Jones who made the offense tick. When he wasn’t handing off to McClanahan, pitching to Gibson or throwing to Moore, Jones would run. He rushed for 600 yards and eight touchdowns, averaging about nine yards a carry.

“He ran the wishbone more effectively than some of the college quarterbacks I see doing it today,” Marsh said. “And he was an unbelievable leader. Everybody on the team had high respect for him and knew that he could carry the whole team. . . .

“He was the reason we did as well as we did.”

In winning their first 10 games, the Tigers outscored their opponents, 425-65.

And, on consecutive Friday nights in October that year, Jones and his teammates beat Schroeder, Ramsey and Elway.

Actually, Ramsey didn’t play against San Fernando, missing the game with what doctors described as a mild case of mononucleosis. But Ramsey, who threw for 1,432 yards and 14 touchdowns in seven games that season, probably wouldn’t have made much difference. San Fernando won, 48-0. It was 42-0 at halftime.

Ramsey, who returned the following week to throw for 227 yards against Monroe, stayed in bed and listened to the San Fernando game on the radio.

“It was terrible,” he told the Valley News and Green Sheet.

Jones threw for two touchdowns and ran for another as the Tigers piled up 399 total yards, including 324 on the ground. Jones’ statistics: 4 for 9 passing for 69 yards; 88 yards rushing on nine carries.

The previous week, San Fernando had rolled over Palisades, 34-7. Schroeder, who threw for 1,400 yards that season, completed 14 of 28 passes for 145 yards, but was sacked five times and had three of his passes intercepted. Jones ran for 39 yards and passed for 79 as San Fernando accumulated 472 total yards.

It was more of the same against Elway and Granada Hills.

Elway, who continued to play despite tearing cartilage in his left knee during the second quarter, had his worst game of the season, completing 10 of 20 passes for 166 yards and a touchdown. He was intercepted twice in what proved to be his last high school game. Less than two weeks later, he had surgery on the knee. His final statistics included 1,837 passing yards and 19 touchdown passes in only six games.

Jones’ only pass against Granada Hills fell incomplete, but he ran for 60 of San Fernando’s 344 rushing yards in a 21-10 victory.

Head to head against the three future pros, Jones completed only 8 of 24 passes for 148 yards and 3 touchdowns.

“We didn’t throw a lot because we had so many running backs who were doing so well,” Marsh said, “but Jones was an outstanding passing quarterback.”

Jones believed he was better than Elway, Ramsey and Schroeder.

“No doubt,” he said. “I was a much better athlete. I was the MVP of our league in our senior year. Definitely, Elway was a better passer. As for Ramsey, I felt I could pass just as good as he could. If we had (Kennedy’s) type of offense at San Fernando, I felt I could have passed just as good or better.”

San Fernando continued to roll along that year, winning its last three regular-season games by 54, 35 and 56 points. But too much success might have caught up with the Tigers.

They were 10-0 and seemingly on their way to the City final when they gave up three second-half touchdowns against Banning and lost, 25-21, in the semifinals.

The game turned around after San Fernando had reached Banning’s 11-yard line less than two minutes before the end of the third quarter. A pitchout by Jones was deflected into the air and picked off by Banning’s Danny Andrews, who returned it 85 yards for a touchdown, cutting the Tigers’ lead to 21-13.

“It was a bad read on my part,” Jones said. “Me and my brother and a buddy of mine were talking about it the other day. I just never should have pitched that ball. It gave them the momentum and we never seemed to be able to get it back.”

Marsh believes the Tigers fell apart because they weren’t used to playing four quarters.

“We were beating everybody so bad,” Marsh said, “that in the last month of the season, the starters didn’t play more than about two quarters each game. I think that really hurt us against Banning. We just totally broke down.”

Banning scored twice in the final eight minutes, the second touchdown following Louie Faison’s leaping interception of a Jones pass.

It was Jones’ last game as a quarterback.

Jones was recruited by several colleges--as a wide receiver.

“I could have gone pretty much anywhere,” he said.

His first choice was Stanford, he said, but then Colorado told him he would get a chance to play quarterback.

“I should have gone to Stanford,” Jones said, “but, coming out of high school, I kind of still wanted to play quarterback. Looking back on it now, I guess I wasn’t being very realistic with myself. As soon as I got to Colorado, they switched me to wide receiver.”

Although he said he adjusted well to his new position, Jones didn’t play enough to earn a letter at Colorado. In nine games as a freshman and sophomore, he caught eight passes for 110 yards and a touchdown.

“He didn’t have all the speed that maybe we’d liked to have had out there,” said Gary Cabe, who was the Colorado receivers coach during Jones’ sophomore year, “but he did have some skill and I think if he’d have stuck with it and worked at it, he would have got more playing time.”

Jones had problems off the field, too. “Partying too much,” in his words, he got behind in the classroom. “A lot of time when I should have been studying,” he said, laughing, “I was on panty raids.”

Midway through his sophomore season, he quit the team. About a month later, he quit school, packed up and headed for home.

“In the back of my mind,” he said, “I knew I could come back and be a plumber and make as much money as guys coming out of college.”

Frustrated by his lack of playing time, he said he was “burned out” on football. He talked to the coaches at San Diego State and Hawaii, but decided against walking on and trying to earn a scholarship at either school.

“I had to make a decision for myself, whether or not I wanted to continue to have to prove myself,” Jones said.

His only regret, he said, was not going to Stanford in the first place, as Elway had urged him to do.

“It would have been a totally different picture,” he said. “I probably would have been catching passes from the best quarterback in the nation. And, more than likely, he probably would have made me an All-American.”

But Jones isn’t about to dwell on what might have been.

He still works out and appears to be in great shape. He and some friends were trying to put together a flag football team, but they couldn’t get all of the players together for practice and gave up on the idea.

All things considered, he’s doing fine, thanks.

“I couldn’t ask for anything more,” he said, “although I would like to win the lottery.”