Celebrity Status : Detroit Lions Quarterback Erik Kramer Uses Newfound Stardom to Benefit Valley College

A year ago, if someone had suggested holding an Erik Kramer celebrity golf tournament, the general reaction would have gone something like this: Golf tournament? Terrific. Who’s Erik Kramer?

Well, in Los Angeles, Kramer still might not be a household name.

But he is in Detroit.

And Dallas.

Kramer, 27, a former Burroughs High backup quarterback and one-year player for Pierce College, shocked the NFL last year when he was summoned from the place he had become attached to during his pro football career--the bench--and led the Detroit Lions to within one victory of the Super Bowl.

And so Monday at the Porter Valley Country Club, Kramer played host to his first celebrity golf tournament, with proceeds going to the Valley College football team, a team for which he never played.

He did, however, play for Jim Fenwick--now the Valley coach--at Pierce.

“I wanted to help out the junior college system in some way,” said Kramer, who lives in Agoura Hills. “For so many guys coming out of high school, the JCs are the only option. The JCs have helped a lot of careers.”

His, for example.

As the No. 2 quarterback at Burroughs High, Kramer received the kind of big-time college recruiting pitches normally reserved for people who never played football. No one called. No one wrote.

Except Fenwick.

And even at Pierce, Kramer was forced to play behind Dave McLaughlin in his first season. Only in his second and final year at Pierce did he get a chance to play, and he led the team to the highly under-publicized Potato Bowl, which is not a vegetable container but rather the name of a football game.

Kramer’s career blossomed briefly in the ensuing two years. He transferred to North Carolina State and became a roaring success, being named to the All-Atlantic Coast Conference team as a junior and senior and also earning the ACC player-of-the-year award as a senior in 1986.

And then he set out on a slippery road to the NFL.

Despite his standout career at North Carolina State, the NFL regarded Kramer as such a longshot that it bestowed the ultimate We Don’t Think Much of You honor upon him, failing to draft him at all.

He made his way into the Atlanta Falcons camp during the players’ strike of 1987 and played quarterback in three replacement games, games in which the real players walked outside the stadium with picket signs. When they came back, Kramer was asked to leave. He spent half of the 1988 season as the starting quarterback for the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League and then, after not playing anywhere for one year, spent the 1990 season on the Lions’ injured reserve list.

After the 1990 season, the Lions released Kramer. At the time he was the fourth quarterback, behind starter Rodney Peete, 1990 No. 1 draft pick Andre Ware and journeyman Bob Gagliano. But the Lions took Kramer back in 1991 and he quickly moved ahead of Ware into the No. 2 slot on the depth chart. Gagliano had been released.

Then, on Oct. 27, Peete hit the ground with a torn Achilles’ tendon in a game against the Dallas Cowboys. And Kramer, who recently couldn’t find work as a quarterback anywhere in North America, became the Lions’ starter.

And a star was born.

Well, almost.

There were a few rough spots.

On Kramer’s first series against the Cowboys, the Lions lost 12 yards in three plays--Kramer lost 16 on a mad scramble and was also called for an illegal forward pass on the play--and had to punt. The Lions ran 10 plays with Kramer at quarterback in the remaining minutes of the first half and gained a total of 12 yards. They made one first down.

But in the second half, Kramer emerged. He completed nine passes for 108 yards and fired two touchdown passes, powering the Lions to a 34-10 rout.

Another bad moment came the next week, in his first start since his Stampeder days. In the closing seconds of a 20-10 loss to the Bears on one of those pleasant Chicago days in November that could kill a polar bear, Kramer broke from the huddle, walked to the line of scrimmage and lined up behind not the center but the left guard .

Then it got better. Kramer led the Lions to the NFC Central championship, ousting the Bears. He got the Cowboys again in the playoffs and demolished them, completing 29 passes for 341 yards and three touchdowns in a 38-6 thrashing.

The Lions were similarly demolished the following week, however, when the eventual Super Bowl champion Washington Redskins blitzed Kramer silly in the second half en route to a 41-10 win in the NFC Championship game.

But now, in the wake of this most unlikely season, Kramer is a somebody. In Detroit they are talking about the battle for the starting quarterback job that looms between Kramer and Peete. In Dallas, where fans take football seriously, they will remember Kramer for a long time.

And so, less than four months later, the guy who couldn’t get the starting job in high school and barely got the No. 1 job at Pierce College headlines a celebrity golf tournament, bringing with him Peete, former Pierce quarterback and UCLA star-turned-actor Mark Harmon, Detroit lineman Dan Owens, and former Oak Park High and USC standout Erik Affholter of the San Diego Chargers among other sports celebrities.

“Two years ago I don’t think this would have worked,” Kramer said, smiling. “But now, people look at me a bit differently. Last season has definitely opened some doors.

“A few months ago I told Jim Fenwick that if I could ever do anything to help his program, that if I could help with a golf tournament like this or anything else, just to call. And he did.

“To be honest, I didn’t think it would be like this. I’ve been working full time for the last month planning it and working on the details. I thought I’d just get a chance to play golf. It hasn’t turned out that way.”

For the longest time, his career didn’t work out the way he had envisioned, either.

“I always knew I could play,” Kramer said. “Even during the lowest moments I always knew I could play this game. It just seemed that no one else knew it. For a long time I felt I had been overlooked.

“But now, other people know I can play too. It definitely breathes new life into my career.”

Asked if there was ever a thought, during the days when he couldn’t even stick around with the Calgary Stampeders, of quitting the game, Kramer smiled again.

“Never,” he said. “I would have made them push me out. I like the game a lot more than the alternative, which is not playing football and having to get a real job. Whenever I’d get that urge I’d try to sleep it off, take a nap and let it pass. Really. The thought of quitting entered my mind and I’d fight like crazy to think about something else.”

His success last season, he said, sprang from that attitude. Because he loved the game so much, he worked hard at it as a reserve, studying endless hours of game film and analyzing defenses. When his opportunity came, he was ready.

And that, according to those who have helped guide his career, has been the benchmark of Kramer’s career. “What separated Erik from all the quarterbacks I’ve dealt with is the way he prepares,” said Mike O’Cain, his quarterback coach at North Carolina State.

From Fenwick: “Nothing surprises me about Erik’s success. I know his work ethic. . . . Days when other kids on our Pierce team were out doing other things, Erik would sit with me and study game film and create offensive strategies by himself.”

And from one of the vanquished, Dallas cornerback Issiac Holt, speaking to a Chicago Tribune reporter after Kramer had dismantled the Cowboys in the playoff game: “Everybody says Kramer is only this or only that, that he hadn’t done much and all that. The guy can play.”

On Monday, he played again.

“Golf. . . . I play two or three times a week and take lessons,” he said. “Am I getting any better? To be honest, I know the game well enough now to be afraid to say ‘yes’ to that question.

“Let’s just say I don’t particularly enjoy playing golf with people who don’t like to hear cuss words. ‘Darn’ just doesn’t work for me on a golf course.”