Quarterback Gets Return Trip : San Diego Native Leads Sun Devils in Holiday Bowl

One day, Pat Roberts, a football coach at Grossmont High School, slammed off his film projector and screamed: “I need a new quarterback!”

The more he thought about it, the more he carried on: “He’s got to be big! He’s got to have big hands! He’s got to be able to throw deep! He’s got to want to be a football player!”

Soon, someone named Jeff Van Raaphorst came to mind. First, this Van Raaphorst kid had good breeding. His dad had played college and pro football. Second, this kid was a catcher in baseball, which meant he had leadership tendencies. Third, even though the kid was a tight end, he’d thrown the ball around in practice and had a tight spiral.

“Plus, I liked the way he walked and talked,” Roberts said.

So he called him in and said: “You’re my quarterback next season.”

“No way,” said Van Raaphorst, age 16.

“Sorry, but you’re it,” said Roberts. “See ya.”

Now, the kid quarterbacks Arizona State. He’s coming home to play in Sunday’s Holiday Bowl.

“I owe everything to Pat Roberts,” Van Raaphorst said this week. “He made me.”

Well, he created a monster.

The kid wants to be so good, he drives himself up a wall. Touchdown passes are not allowed to wobble.

Has any quarterback ever been perfect? Van Raaphorst will kill himself trying.

He has always been that way. As a child, he’d fuss at his mom when they played monopoly.

His dad, Dick Van Raaphorst, said: “You know kids. He’d want to win so bad, he’d make up his own rules.”

His dad knows about winning. As a kid, he played at Ohio State for Woody Hayes. He was a kicker on the 1961 team that won the Big Ten Conference, and later, he kicked for the Chargers.

People like John Hadl and Lance Alworth used to hang around the house. When little Jeff began to play organized ball, he wore No. 21 in honor of Hadl.

But he wasn’t a quarterback until Roberts told him he had to be. Then, in his senior season, Van Raaphorst averaged 298 yards passing per game.

Roberts coached former NFL quarterback Brian Sipe at Grossmont. Roberts said Van Raaphorst is the best he has had. And the kid enrolled at Arizona State, where he began playing regularly last season as a sophomore and threw for more than 2,000 yards.

He threw for 2,000 more this year, and likely will pass Mike Pagel and Danny White on the all-time passing list when he graduates next spring.

But there’s a problem.

“If we can ever get him (Van Raaphorst) to just relax, just a little bit, his whole game will improve a lot,” Roberts said.

So he sees a psychologist.

Once a week, he visits James Gough, who helps him with something called “self-hypnosis.”

Is he relaxing more?

“I’m trying,” Dr. Gough said.

Now, it worked for Mark Malone, the Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback who used to play at ASU and is, ironically, from El Cajon. Malone had played poorly and finally came to Dr. Gough, who turned around his season.

Frank Kush, then the Sun Devil coach, said to Gough: “What the hell did you do to the kid?”

“Witchcraft,” Gough said, laughing.

“Well,” said Kush. “Can you do that again? We can beat Southern Cal.”

So Gough is trying the same thing with Van Raaphorst. When he gets mad and is about to scream at an offensive lineman for letting a pass rusher through, he trains himself to watch the 25-second clock for relaxation.

“You just see it, and it ticks methodically, and you get in a methodical frame of mind,” Van Raaphorst said. “I think I get into the emotions of the game too much. I need to disassociate myself more. As far as calling audibles . . . . I don’t want to be caught up in the game. I want to be practical.

“It wouldn’t be so important if I weren’t a quarterback.”

So blame it on Dr. Frankenstein. . . . er . . . Coach Roberts.