Ex-Edison Quarterback Aiming for New League : Football: Frank Seurer, cut by the Kansas City Chiefs in 1988, hopes to go pro again.

The real world is knocking, but Frank Seurer doesn’t want to answer the door. Not yet.

Seurer, a former Edison High School and University of Kansas quarterback who played two seasons with the USFL’s Los Angeles Express and two with the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, is 28.

He was married 10 months ago, and he and his wife are expecting their first child in three months. Seurer is working for his uncle’s mobile window screening company, but he’s also enrolled in Rancho Santiago College’s firemen’s academy and hopes to make a career move soon.

But first, he’d like to revive his old career. The new World League of American Football is supposed to start up next spring, and Seurer thinks he has a few professional seasons left in him.

That’s why he has spent weekends the past two months playing for the Orange Coast Dolphins, a semipro team in the six-team Southern California Football League. It’s far from the NFL or the Big Eight Conference, but Seurer hopes the experience will get him ready for a WLAF tryout.

“I know I’m getting old, and I can’t play forever, but I want to play at least two more seasons,” said Seurer, who moved from Kansas City to Huntington Beach in April. “I still think I have the ability.”

Seurer suffered a setback Saturday night when he broke a bone in the ring finger on his right (throwing) hand during a barroom scuffle. Seurer said he was trying to break up a fight between his younger brother, Troy, and some other men at a Huntington Beach nightclub and was thrown against a wall.

“It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” Seurer said.

He’ll be out at least a month, and perhaps the season, depending on how far the Dolphins (10-0-1) go in the Minor League Football Alliance playoffs.

The tournament begins Nov. 4, and Seurer might return if the Dolphins, ranked sixth nationally, are still alive in late November. The 78-team alliance sponsors a national championship game Dec. 2.

“Unless I’m healthy, and it feels good, I may not play again this season,” Seurer said. “It’s not worth the risk of injuring it worse.”

Seurer had been tearing up the league. He completed 51 of 85 passes (60%) for 693 yards and nine touchdowns in seven games, and Gil Harris, the Dolphin player-coach, said Seurer’s completion rate might be 10% higher if he had more experienced receivers to throw to.

“He reads and picks apart defenses and throws sometimes before the receivers are out of their patterns,” Harris said. “His arm is still strong, sharp. He’s a pinpoint passer.”

The league is not as challenging as the NFL, the pay (nothing) stinks, and Seurer misses playing in big stadiums before huge crowds. But he is having fun.

“There’s no pressure, no politics, no business end of the game,” Seurer said. “It reminds me of playing high school football.”

Seurer, who passed for 2,137 yards in two seasons (1984-85) with the Express as Steve Young’s backup, said he was the victim of a business decision by the Chiefs in 1988.

He was expected to challenge for the starting quarterback job in 1987, but a car accident, in which Seurer tore ligaments in his left knee and dislocated his right hip, caused him to miss training camp and half of the season.

He returned at midseason, started three games and finished with 340 yards passing, completing 26 of 55 attempts.

Bill Kenney and Steve DeBerg battled for the starting job in 1988, and Seurer was cut just before the season. The team opted to keep rookie Danny McManus of Florida State as the third quarterback.

“I don’t think they cut me on the basis of ability,” Seurer said. “My contract ($175,000 a year) would have been high for a third-string quarterback, so they kept Danny and only had to pay him about $60,000.”

Seurer, who married former Chief cheerleader Amy Larson, spent the next year and a half working for a Kansas City advertising company before moving back to Huntington Beach.

He lives in an apartment about a block from Edison High, where he passed for 3,751 yards in three seasons and helped the Chargers win the 1979 Southern Section Big Five Conference championship.

As a senior, Seurer threw for 2,033 yards and 23 touchdowns, including four scoring passes in a 55-0 victory over Redlands in the Big Five title game at Anaheim Stadium.

“Those are still my fondest memories,” Seurer said.

Seurer signed with Kansas and became the Jayhawk starter in the fourth game of his freshman season. In four years, he threw for 6,410 yards, including a conference-record 2,789 as a senior in 1983.

The highlight of his college career was Kansas’ 26-20 upset of USC at the Coliseum in September of his senior year. Seurer completed 28 of 36 passes for 386 yards and two touchdowns for the Jayhawks, who were 20-point underdogs. He was named Sports Illustrated’s player of the week.

“USC was the only school I wanted to go to when I was in high school, and they were the only school that didn’t recruit me,” Seurer said. “They had more talent, but they took us lightly, and we played the best game of our lives.”

If only Seurer’s father could have seen it.

Frank Seurer Sr. was his son’s biggest fan. He quit his job as a truck driver in 1979 so he could attend every Edison practice and game. He raised money to support the Chargers, sold programs at games and organized parties for the players, who called him “the over-the-hill teen-ager.”

During Seurer’s junior year of college, Frank Sr. moved the family to Lawrence, Kan., to be closer to his sons (Troy also went to Kansas) and to get away from the hectic Southern California environment.

He made enough from the sale of his home in Huntington Beach to buy a house and a restaurant, Pop’s Bar-B-Que, in Lawrence.

But on Aug. 2, 1983, eight months after he arrived, Frank Seurer Sr. was killed. His body was discovered in the rear of the restaurant by a beer delivery man. He had been stabbed several times.

Bryant Keith Bell, a former restaurant employee, was convicted of second-degree murder and aggravated robbery. Bell, a nephew of former Chief linebacker Bobby Bell, had been fired by Seurer.

“He was looking forward to that USC game so much,” Seurer said. “I still miss him. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about him. The only way to keep myself at peace is to know he’s in a better place now. Otherwise, you’d drive yourself crazy.”

To this day, Seurer is perplexed by the murder. He said business was slow that summer and that his father asked Bell to take a pay cut if he wished to continue working. According to Seurer, Bell refused and was fired.

The restaurant closed for about a month after the murder. Bell attended the funeral, and the Seurers even hired Bell back to get the business restarted. Bell later confessed to the murder when questioned by police.

“I’ve never been one to hate anyone, but I can’t understand this,” Seurer said. “I don’t feel hate toward him, but it’s weird. I just can’t figure out what made him do that.”

Bell has been in prison since the conviction but is scheduled to have a parole hearing in December. Seurer said that his mother, Sue, his brother, Tim, and his sister, Beth, who still live in Lawrence, have launched a campaign to have Bell’s parole denied.

“My mom feels real uneasy about him getting out of jail,” Seurer said.

Meanwhile, Seurer is back home, trying to get back into the game his father lived for, the game he loved to see his sons play.

“A lot of people ask me if I wished my father were here to see me play in the pros,” Seurer said. “I say he’s had the best seat in the house.”