Giving Up Football While on Top the Best Thing to Do : Colleges: Former Valley tight end, a ’92 preseason All-American, looking to life without the stresses of the game.

Grading sheet in hand, Rob Phenicie looked at the videotape and grimaced, which wasn’t a rare occurrence. He groaned. He winced.

An assignment had been blown by a Valley College football player. Phenicie scribbled down another evaluation and continued watching game film.

“I always grade these guys pretty tough,” said Phenicie, a first-year assistant. “They’re not real crazy about it.”

Sometimes, though, the videotape made him smile.

Valley tight end Brandon Best, a preseason All-American for the 1992 season with a matinee-idol name to match, blocked a defensive back so hard that the defender disappeared from camera range.

Hocus-pocus, he’s out of focus.

“He knocked the DB right off the (TV) screen,” Phenicie said, laughing. “We all got kind of jacked up watching that one.”

Just another sterling moment for Best, who was heavily recruited by several NCAA Division I football powers, including UCLA and other Pacific 10 Conference schools.

Evidently, there will be no more on-screen exploits. Best is a not-ready-for-prime-time player.

His teammates think he’s plum crazy. His coaches wanted to throttle him. Best, who started playing organized football in the fourth grade, has a slew of scholarship offers in hand.

They might as well be grains of sand. Best is burned out on the sport and said he’s giving it up.

“I played for nine years and it was time to hang up the cleats,” he said. “I’m going to enjoy going to school without playing football, just being a regular student.”

Not many players retire by choice at 19. Fewer do so with a laundry list of colleges on their heels.

“The (recruiters’) reaction is ‘Why? Wow. Unbelievable,’ ” Phenicie said.

Best’s rise to prominence was just as head-turning. At Hart, Best was a two-year varsity starter at offensive guard. In the Hart run-and-shoot, there is no tight end. Consequently, Best waited until junior college to give the position a try, and soon showed that he was a prospect.

“He came to junior college, put his ears back and proved he could play,” Valley Coach Jim Fenwick said.

Entering the 1992 season, JC Grid-Wire, a junior college football ranking service, named him a preseason All-American.

Things were falling into place. Consequently, Fenwick and his staff were more than a little shocked when Best informed them that he wasn’t sure he was interested in playing at the next level.

After all, most junior college players are there specifically to continue their careers, with an eye toward playing at a Division I school. Yet despite offers from several prominent schools, Best blanched.

“I’m disappointed for selfish reasons, but I’m also disappointed for him,” Fenwick said. “I kept thinking that maybe in a week or two, he’d have a change of heart.

“It would be real easy to just strangle him and say, ‘Look at all the other guys who tried to get where you’re at.’ But you have to respect his wishes.”

The timing was particularly startling. At Hart, Best (6-foot-4) weighed a rather scrawny 205 pounds, so he put on 30 pounds in order to hold his own in junior college. Maybe the hard part was over.

However, Best said the prospect of going back to the weight room to add even more bulk--amazingly he has lost the 30 pounds since season’s end--sounds anything but attractive.

“I’m definitely not where I need to be (in weight) to play in Division I,” he said. “I don’t want to go through that again.”

Best caught 18 passes for 318 yards and a touchdown for Valley last fall in a modified run-and-shoot offense. In a 44-41 loss to Santa Monica, Best had five receptions for 101 yards and a touchdown. Run-blocking is his strong suit.

“His best attribute is his drive blocking,” Phenicie said. “If I wanted a drive blocker, I’d say, ‘I want this guy.’ ”

Truth be told, it is Best’s drive that has been blocked. Sometime during drills last summer, as he recalled, he stared through triple-digit heat into an auburn sky and realized, “This is it. I’m through.”

Best said he talked to a handful of former Hart teammates now playing at Division I schools. They talked in frank terms about the time and dedication that Division I football demands. He weighed their words carefully.

“I made up my own mind, but I did talk to people about it,” he said. “It’s a sacrifice they believe in, but I wasn’t so sure.”

There was no flash point, he said, no particular moment that pushed him toward the door. He made up his mind at midseason to retire and informed the Valley staff.

His interest on the wane, Best nonetheless completed the season and major colleges continued to call.

The list of those offering scholarships, Valley coaches said, is a virtual who’s who of college football: Oklahoma, Purdue, Arizona State and other Pac-10 schools.

“I just told them the truth,” Fenwick said. “They’d all call and say they were high on him. I’d say that he was having a great year, but that it didn’t look like he wanted to play any more.

“It’s just one of those things. You know, he’s worked so darn hard. . . . “

To Best, that’s exactly the point. The potential ends didn’t justify the means. Every move up the competitive ladder, from high school to junior college to a four-year program, the expectations and workload become heavier.

Time to run a fade pattern.

“I’m leaving with no real injuries, I’m leaving on a real high note,” Best explained. “I wanted to quit when it was my idea, not when someone else was telling me it was time.”

Best, who has a respectable grade-point average of 2.7, is on schedule to earn his Associate of Arts degree after the spring semester. Fenwick says that Best definitely has his head on straight. He plans to take courses in business or police science.

“He’s the kind of kid you’d hire if you had a job opening,” Fenwick said.

Best will continue his education at a four-year school as Joe College, not a GI Joe lost in the regimented football shuffle. He’d like to attend Cal State Long Beach or San Diego State.

For the first time in years, he will have a social life next fall. So what’s the next move? Does he buy a convertible and begin chasing girls at frat parties?

“That doesn’t sound too bad to me,” Best said.