Four States and Countless Rolls of Game Film Later, Chad Davis is Set to : PASS TO THE FUTURE

Maybe all of this craziness started when he was 3.

Chad Davis, who may become the best schoolboy quarterback ever in San Diego County by the time his next two years are up at Torrey Pines High School, can barely remember those rides. His father, Bob, was the coach at a high school in Lamar, Colo., and he used to put ol’ Chad right on the team bus when they went on road games. And some of those trips were 400 miles. One way.

Chad loved it.

Or maybe it started when he was 8. By then, Chad was playing Little League baseball in Oklahoma--75 to 80 games a summer.

“It was my whole summer,” Chad said.

Then there was the decision in the sixth grade, made by his parents, to hold Chad back a year. Chad had a late birthday. Bob Davis was looking ahead to high school and figured it might be best if Chad had an extra year to mature.

“Football class,” Bob Davis called it the other night in the living room of the family’s Del Mar house.

From across the living room, Chad’s mother, DeAnn, shot her husband a nasty glance.

“Oh, his mom did it for his social well-being,” Bob said, smiling.

DeAnn: “I think he needed maturity.”

Chad: “It was my decision. They asked me.”

Bob: “It was nothing for us (as high school coaches in Texas at that time) to go through the entire sixth- and seventh-grade class and find whose birthdays were after Sept. 1 and, if they were athletes, suggest they repeat. The difference between a 17- and 18-year-old kid is enormous.”

Chad: “I’m glad. It was a blessing.”

Blessings seem to abound in the Davis household on the kind of lazy summer night you might hear about in some song on the radio. Football practice was long since finished. The family dog, Tibby, weary from an earlier attack on a stuffed animal, slept on the living room floor. Chad’s friend, Liz Milavskas, was visiting from Palm Springs. And football was on television.

It wasn’t too hot, but the air hung heavy with hopes and dreams.

Chad would be starting his junior year in a new school, Torrey Pines, as the starting quarterback. Bob would be starting his new job--as Torrey Pines’ coach.

The family is accustomed to such autumns. They have lived the life of football nomads, shepherded by Bob, the coach, and now following the Golden Arm of Chad, the quarterback. They have roamed through Colorado, a couple of tiny Texas towns--Cleveland and Athens--Oklahoma City and then Palm Springs before landing here.

Always, there is football. If Chad Davis is not playing the game, he is watching it. Or talking about it or thinking about it.

Or opening letters, as the case may be.

He isn’t even old enough to exchange senior pictures, but he is collecting letters from universities all over the country. They arrive in the mail nearly every day now, from places such as USC and Miami and Tennessee.

There are stacks of them in his room. He has gotten personal letters from Coach John Cooper at Ohio State, George Perles at Michigan State and Dennis Erickson at Miami. Notre Dame’s Lou Holtz dropped him a Christmas card.

Chad opens these letters, reads them, dreams about them.

He has been to football games at USC and struck up a friendship with Trojan quarterback Todd Marinovich. They were introduced by John Matsko, USC offensive line coach.

Said Chad: “He said, ‘Todd, this is Chad. He’s going to break your record.’ ”

There are parallels here, and not just because Davis looks up to Marinovich. Davis, like Marinovich, was reared by a father who demanded no less than the best, in effort and performance, and geared everything toward football. And Davis, like Marinovich, is compiling some big numbers.

After two seasons at Palm Springs, Davis is on track to break Marinovich’s national high school passing record of 9,182 yards set from 1984-1987. So far, Davis, 6-feet-2 and 170 pounds, has completed 308 of 491 passes for 4,776 yards and 40 touchdowns.

He has thrown just five interceptions--and three of those were tipped passes. As a freshman, he once threw 192 consecutive passes without an interception. As a freshman .

Three of his four receivers at Palm Springs received college scholarships.

This is a guy who used the Rams’ conditioning program and the USC weight program over the summer, a guy who will watch game films, hoping to sharpen his audible skills, while others are at the beach. There are two boxes of game films in the garage, a stack by the fireplace and more at Torrey Pines.

No, this isn’t your everyday high school quarterback. This is a thoroughbred, a guy who has stepped out of the pages of a Chip Hilton book and onto the football team at Torrey Pines.

The Davis family has had a vision for several years now. In it, Chad stars as the high school quarterback, moves on to college and starts for State U. In Chad’s version, he leads State U. to a national championship.

He is not yet sure which college will acquire his services, but he is just 17. His junior year of high school started two days ago. College? Most of his classmates are just happy to have their driver’s licenses.

But then, Chad’s way of thinking always has been a bit different. For some kids, playing ball is something to do when they are tired of MTV, and the video arcade is closed. When Chad was little, he would come home in the afternoon and take a nap before the game.

With his dad there as father and coach, Chad would shoot free throws late at night. He would pitch in the spring, even if it was cold. He would pass a football a certain number of times each day.

In the beginning, before sports became an obsession, Bob sat Chad down and talked.

“I gave Chad a choice,” Bob said. “I said, ‘If you’re going to do this, you’re going to do this the right way. . . .’

“I believe there is a right way and a wrong way to do things. I can’t stand to see athletics shorted.”

Said Chad: “It was probably the biggest decision I ever made.”

Chad started on the varsity in all three sports as a freshman at Palm Springs. He plans to play all three at Torrey Pines, but football remains his No. 1 love.

“Sports is my life,” he said. “It’s what I’ve grown up around. I like to practice as much as I like to play games.”

One night when Chad was in the seventh grade, just after he had started playing football, Bob asked Chad what he saw when he dropped back to pass.

Chad told him it looked like everything was in slow motion, allowing him clear vision all over the field.

“I thought, ‘Oh, Gawd,’ ” Bob said, native Oklahoma still thick in his accent.

Said Chad: “Ever since then, it seems like it’s getting slower and slower.”

The basics: In 18 years as a head coach in Oklahoma, Colorado and Texas, Bob compiled a record of 85-56-6. He had developed a reputation as a builder.

The vision: As Chad approached high school age, Bob wanted to move the family to California. He figured that Chad would mature as a quarterback in the land of wide-open offenses and increased exposure. He didn’t want to coach Chad as a freshman because he figured Chad would start on the varsity, and he didn’t want to put more pressure on Chad. He planned to resume his coaching career after Chad had established himself. In the meantime, he found a job as the defensive coordinator at Palm Springs High under a new coach--and friend--Jerry Cheek.

Bob moved to California ahead of the rest of the family during Chad’s eighth-grade year. DeAnn, supervisor of the gifted students program in the Oklahoma City schools, wanted to remain in her job for another year. Chad moved to Palm Springs three-quarters of the way through eighth grade so he could attend spring football practices and get a head start learning the offense.

As Bob expected, Chad started as a freshman. He started for two seasons at Division IV Palm Springs, leading his team to 9-2 records in each. Both times, though, Palm Springs suffered bitter defeats in the playoffs.

In Chad’s freshman season, he injured a knee and still played the final eight minutes of an eventual overtime loss to Workman. He finished the season with 1,881 yards passing and arthroscopic surgery.

In his sophomore year, Palm Springs lost, 20-13, to Nogales in the first round of the Southern Section playoffs. Palm Springs’ top three receivers were out with hamstring injuries, but Chad still completed 22 of 31 passes for 267 yards. For the year, he had 2,885 yards.

“There might be a sophomore who has equaled what he’s done, but not a freshman any time, anywhere,” Cheek said. “I coached Dennis Shaw at the same age, and Dennis Shaw went on to play in the NFL for 10 or 12 years. I think probably at this stage--as a freshman and sophomore--Chad Davis is a better football player. In the year coming up, though, that’s when Dennis Shaw was great. But early in his career, Chad is the best I ever coached.”

That’s not bad coming from Cheek, who has coached for 32 years. He has been an offensive coordinator at Oregon State, Utah and the University of Washington, as well as with the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League. At Washington, Cheek worked with Sonny Sixkiller, who led the nation in passing in 1970.

“(Chad) has a great knowledge of the game for a young guy,” Cheek said. “He’s coachable, and he has probably as good a touch throwing the touch pass as I’ve ever seen on any level I’ve coached. He has a much better touch than Sonny Sixkiller. But he’s not close in arm strength.”

Said Bob Davis: “In the next two years, he needs to build his upper body more. Thicken him up.”

After two years at Palm Springs, Chad wanted to play in a larger division, and Bob was ready to resume coaching. They set out to find a school. They decided on Torrey Pines--after watching films of every game the Falcons played last season. They watched each several times and graded each Torrey Pines player, then made their decision.

Word started filtering from Palm Springs last spring. The Torrey Pines football players had heard about this guy Chad Davis.

The Falcons went 2-8 last year, but they hadn’t lost their dignity. They weren’t too sure about a couple of carpetbaggers riding in to town to save the day.

“When I first met Chad, it was like, so what?” senior linebacker Noah Ostanik said. “I understood the league he was coming from wasn’t that hot.”

But a couple of things happened. The Falcons found out that Chad Davis wasn’t some hotshot with a big head, and they discovered that this new family was football crazy. Chad’s older brother Richard, 27, is one of Bob’s assistants. DeAnn likes football so much that she attends practices as well as games. The transition went smoothly.

“The Davises are a really great family,” Ostanik said. “I’ll tell you, we’re real happy to get them here. Everybody goes over to Coach Davis’ house and hangs out. I don’t know how they afford the food.

“It’s not just that that the whole family lives, eats and sleeps football. Coach Davis really cares about you. He’ll yell at you in practice, but everything is real positive.”

Torrey Pines will use an offense similar to the University of Miami’s. In practice, Chad has been calling audibles about 75% of the time.

“It’s amazing the way he reads a defense,” Ostanik said. “I hate playing against him when we scrimmage.”

Said junior offensive lineman Mark Roe: “He’s a great quarterback. He’s one of the smartest I’ve ever seen or been associated with.”

The Davis game plan is moving along on schedule, and it has stopped long enough to give Torrey Pines a lift. Saturday, the Falcons will open their season at home at 7:30 p.m. against USDHS, and Chad Davis will resume his career. He will take the snap, drop back to pass and look into a wide open future.

That read isn’t too difficult to make.