Land Acquisition--and Title Deeds : Ex-Quarterback Dazzled in ’70 City Championship, Then Helped Build a Booming Real Estate Company

Images flicker and details fade, but Dana Potter will never forget the events of Dec. 12, 1970.

Neither will the 16,500 spectators who packed the stands at Birmingham High that day to watch the City Section championship football game between cross-town rivals San Fernando and Granada Hills highs, nor the countless others who caught glimpses of that legendary battle from the tops of motor homes and nearby apartment buildings.

They came in droves to see the big game, maybe the biggest in Valley history. Maybe the most unruly too.

Granada Hills was a Cinderella team that year--small and slow and picked by many to finish last in the Mid-Valley League. Potter, who now uses his leadership abilities as a partner in a real estate company, was the 5-foot-11, 165-pound quarterback who made miracles happen on a weekly basis.

“Dana didn’t have the size or speed of John Elway, but he did more that senior season than Elway ever did in high school,” says Jack Neumeier, who coached both at Granada Hills. “He was a tremendous, tremendous quarterback.”

Potter broke most of the City passing records that season, racking up 36 touchdowns and more than 3,000 yards through the air. He tossed two touchdown passes in the final two minutes to shock Carson in the regular season, three in the final eight minutes to topple Wilson in the playoffs. He was named a Sunkist All-American and shared City player-of-the-year honors with Anthony Davis.

Davis, later a superstar tailback at USC, was Potter’s counterpart at San Fernando. He threw for more than 1,500 yards that season and ran for more than 1,500. In the game that decided the league title, Davis gouged out 174 yards on the ground against Granada Hills and added 142 through the air in a 40-15 San Fernando rout.

It was a dream matchup: San Fernando’s unstoppable running attack against Granada Hills’ unstoppable passing attack; Davis’ blazing speed versus Potter’s soft touch; San Fernando’s hard-nosed single wing versus the gimmicky, wide-open precursor of the run-and-shoot that Neumeier had installed that summer.

To be sure, it was also a battle between a predominantly black San Fernando team and a predominantly white Granada Hills team, between a poor San Fernando team and a middle-class Granada Hills team, between a historically dominant San Fernando team and a Granada Hills team that had never been to the playoffs. And there was plenty of bad blood. The year before, San Fernando and Granada Hills had brawled during pregame warm-ups.

High school football was a community obsession in those days, and the Birmingham crowd noise had reached fever pitch long before the game began. Potter said tears were pouring down his face during the coin flip.

“I wanted to win so bad,” he says. “That rivalry had gotten so intense. I’d never been so emotionally involved in a game.”

San Fernando opened a 13-0 first-quarter lead on an electrifying 78-yard punt return by Davis and a botched punt snap.

The rest of the game is a blur for Potter, a cascade of screams and buttonhooks and hugs and double reverses and celebratory pileups. This much remains vivid: Potter scrambled for four touchdowns and completed 12 of 21 for 177 yards, propelling Granada Hills to a 38-28 lead with two minutes 23 seconds to play.

Then all the racial tensions, class resentments and antagonisms that had been brewing all afternoon erupted. Fights broke out on the field and in the bleachers. The benches emptied. So did the stands.

On-field police desperately struggled to restore order. Reinforcements that had been wisely stationed across the street rushed into the stadium to whisk the players into buses. The game--and the season--was declared complete. Trophy presentations were postponed.

Potter never matched his high school successes during his collegiate stints at Nebraska, Iowa and Cal State Northridge. After college, he had unsuccessful tryouts with the San Francisco 49ers, Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys.

But for one memorable day, Dana Potter was the quintessential hometown football hero, indestructible, forever young, on top of the world.

More than 20 years have passed. Potter’s top three receivers--who were also the City’s top three receivers in 1970--are in agriculture, construction and the recording industry, respectively.

Davis, after brief stints with the National Football League, the World Football League and the Canadian Football League, followed by an equally brief acting career, is working in real estate.

Potter is sitting in his office at Pinnacle Estate Properties, the real estate company he and three partners started in 1985. On one wall, he has a framed collection of business cards: Henry Ford’s, A. Lincoln’s, Dr. Albert Einstein’s, Edison Electric Light’s, Benjamin Franklin’s and Dana Potter’s, among others.

On another wall are pictures of his sons, Matthew and Christopher. On his desk, there is a picture of him and his wife with Mayor Tom Bradley at a dinner for World Impact, a Christian inner-city charity.

These days, Potter is usually preoccupied with God, family and real estate, but now, he is reminiscing about football. About his short-lived career at Nebraska, where he warmed the bench for future Raider backup quarterback David Humm.

About his decision to transfer to Iowa during his sophomore season, and his decision to transfer to Northridge a month later . . . about his 1977 return to Granada Hills to help Neumeier coach Elway, a brash young kid with a rocket arm and no touch . . . about what could have been.

“Playing at Northridge was depressing,” Potter says, shaking his head. “I’d watch Nebraska (on) Saturday afternoon on TV playing in front of 87,000, then I’d have to go play in front of 3,000. I wasn’t getting up for the games, and I wasn’t playing well at all.

“When you’re 19, you make a lot of stupid decisions. I realize now that if I had stayed with Nebraska, I would have gotten an opportunity to play for a winning program. It was a bad choice from a football standpoint. But if I had stayed, I wouldn’t have met my wife. I wouldn’t have had my boys. I wouldn’t have started this company.”

Only 39, and only seven pounds heavier than during his playing days, Potter still looks sharp--gray suit, dark tie, tousled white hair with a tinge of blond, flashing green eyes. He still lives in Granada Hills, where he often runs into people who remember him from the San Fernando game.

But the local team is no longer a local mania. Potter misses the days of 150-member bands and 150-member drill teams, a time when football games were community festivals and everybody came. “The big difference between then and now is the sense of camaraderie, the sense of community,” he says. “I don’t see that at Granada Hills games anymore, and I think that’s disappointing. Things have really changed.”

Obviously, Potter’s life has changed too. He has responsibilities: a wife, two kids, 180 employees. He devotes much of his minimal free time to World Impact. He returned last week from his first two-week vacation in seven years.

“Sometimes, you look up and you’ve worked 14 straight days,” he says. “It’s tough. I have to make a real effort to set aside time for my family.”

Still, Potter remains involved with athletics. He does color commentary for Northridge games on KGIL. He serves as host for a celebrity softball game every year. He is developing a World Impact sports ministry.

He also has helped turn Pinnacle into somewhat of a jockocracy. His partners are former high school athletes. His brokers include alums from the Seattle Mariners (Jim Anderson), the Atlanta Braves (Phil Lombardi), the Green Bay Packers (Keith Myers) and a host of high school and college sports teams. No wonder Pinnacle’s ringer-laden softball team placed first among 212 teams in the 1989 Western regional.

Sports is not the same thing as life. The real estate world has no timeouts, no screaming crowds, no off-season. But Potter still credits his three years calling signals for Granada Hills with helping him through his seven years calling signals for Pinnacle.

The basic principles, Potter says, apply in both fields: Never give up. Never cut corners. Never make excuses. Believe in yourself. Failures are inevitable--never let them get you down. Use the rule book to your advantage. Lead with deeds, not words. Work harder than anyone else. Listen. The team comes first. Compete like hell.

“I think athletics are great preparation for such a competitive business,” Potter says. “You learn to never give up, to stick together. . . . I think hiring athletes has a lot to do with Pinnacle’s success. We take what we learned in sports and put it to work.”

Potter says that Pinnacle has topped the North Valley in sales four years running, despite a plummeting housing market. He is a successful businessman, a proud father, a happy man.

But every now and then, Potter admits, he harks back to his football career. He remembers learning his position from his Pop Warner coach, Jamie Russell, the brother of actress Jane Russell, the brother-in-law of Ram quarterback Bob Waterfield. He remembers football practice his senior season: each week’s game plan wilder than the last, a smorgasbord of double passes and shotgun snaps to running backs. He remembers rooming with another Ram quarterback, Pat Haden, at the 1970 Shrine all-star game.

And he remembers that title game, the day it seemed Dana Potter could do anything he wanted on a football field. . . .

“You know, I really didn’t play well,” Potter says. “That was probably my worst game of the year. . . . I scored those four touchdowns, but I was aiming the ball instead of throwing it. I think I was too hyped-up.”

In myth, the hometown hero is flawless under pressure. He goes straight to college glory and pro stardom. Reality is less poetic. It has twists and turns and rough edges. The game ends, a riot breaks out and the hometown hero goes into real estate.

Dana Potter smiles, looking up at his sons’ cherubic faces on the wall above him. Reality is fine with him.