Justin Armour Is Stanford’s All-Everything

Stanford’s Justin Armour is that guy you hated in high school, the guy your girlfriend daydreamed about in chemistry class and the guy you still voted for for student body president.

The top passer and runner on the football team, he also kicked, returned kicks and played safety. Made AAU All-American in track and field in the long jump and high jump. Was all-state in basketball and good enough to spend his summers at those shoe company camps, playing against guys on their way to Final Four lineups and NBA money.

Class valedictorian, with a 4.0 grade-point average, editor of the school newspaper, Bible scholar, National Honor Society, French, math and science clubs. A fair baritone, he sang “It’s All Right With Me” as Aristide Forestier in “Can-Can,” the school musical in his senior year. Cried while seeing “Awakenings” and “Steel Magnolias.”

Good enough in French to tutor children, straight enough to speak out against the drugs that his brother fought through rehabilitation. A national sports magazine came to call in his senior year for a full-blown story. At 6 feet 6 and 215 pounds, Justin Armour was a face above the crowd, not in it.

Made a 25 on the American College Test in his sophomore year in high school when 17 qualifies you for college under NCAA guidelines.

Is it any wonder that he trained in the Garden of the Gods, at the foot of Pikes Peak in his hometown of Manitou Springs, Colo.?

Folks in Palo Alto ask if it’s any wonder he was a Stanford man before he was a man, seeing as how he adopted the university on a visit with a neighbor as an eighth-grader.

“After he went back there as a senior, that was it,” says Anne Armour, mother of Justin and his summer employer. “He called every other school after him and told them he was committed.”

In his spare time, Armour works alongside his sister, Necole, and brother, Jason, bussing tables and washing dishes in Cafe Sweet Annie’s, where the busboy is sometimes a little too quick.

“Whenever somebody puts a fork down, Justin takes the plate away,” Anne says. “I have to tell him to slow down, let people take their time.”

Armour was a tailback in Manitou Springs High’s single wing offense, and his statistics border on the surreal. As a senior, he passed for 2,103 yards and 27 touchdowns and ran for 1,320 yards and 25 touchdowns for a 13-0 team. He also returned a kickoff for a touchdown, kicked 37 extra points and intercepted eight passes. In three seasons, he amassed 8,119 yards and 124 touchdowns, running and passing.

One rating service called him the fourth-best high school quarterback in the country, but that didn’t keep him from moving to split end when he got to Stanford and saw Steve Stenstrom--now an off-campus roommate--entrenched in the position as a sophomore and two other freshmen, Mark Butterfield and Chris Berg, waiting their turns.

“We were down to three receivers, and I was enamored with the opportunity to get out on the grass and play,” Armour says.

He also saw the future.

“I saw three of us competing to be a backup to Steve for three years,” he says. “I think each guy is going to have one opportunity to do something. It’s one opportunity that the coaches are going to watch, and if you take advantage of it, they will be impressed and you will play.”

He decided his opportunity was at receiver, and the coaches were impressed. He played in blocking situations as a freshman, working around a broken foot, and caught 36 passes as a sophomore. After a switch to tight end in spring ball--”it gave me an opportunity to work on my blocking,” Armour says--he is back at split end and leads the Cardinal with 24 receptions for 233 yards and four touchdowns. He caught 10 passes for 155 yards and three touchdowns in Stanford’s comeback victory over Colorado on Saturday.

“You get a 5-9 cornerback matched against him and you have trouble,” says UCLA defensive coordinator Bob Field, who must figure a way to deal with just such a problem when Armour goes against the Bruins’ Teddy Lawrence on Saturday at Palo Alto.

Armour even has Stanford Coach Bill Walsh musing about his NFL days.

“With Justin, I go back many, many years to Bob Trumpy,” Walsh says. “Bob and I worked together with the Cincinnati Bengals, and Bob came in as a wide receiver and he was 6 foot 6 and 215 pounds. We made him a tight end, and he made All-NFL almost immediately. He was a great tight end.

“I think that is what Justin is like. He’s going to be an outstanding college receiver, and he may become an All-American, for that matter. But I do think he’ll be a tight end in the NFL and probably a great one.”

Some of that might be an indictment of Armour’s speed. He hears his characteristics listed--big and tall, with a long-legged, loping stride--and realizes he is being pigeon-holed. He claims a 4.57-second time in the 40 and laughs.

“We’ve got short, burner guys, but watch them run a ‘go’ pattern,” he says. “Then watch me on the other side of the field. I’m usually even with them.”

He has Walsh convinced.

“I would have to consider him out of the ordinary among college receivers because he’s not going to be the 4.3 kind of athlete we’re looking at all the time,” Walsh says. “But he’s a bigger, rangier, more substantial target who can catch the ball in traffic and get open and then do his share of running. . . .

“He’s a unique guy in today’s football.”

And outside of football.

George Rykovich, the coach at Manitou Springs High, is not surprised at Armour’s success at Stanford, only that it has come in the autumn.

“He’s a special kid,” Rykovich says. “He’s just one of those kids who is blessed, but who does something with it. A lot of people didn’t think he would play football in college, though. He went to all of the elite basketball camps in Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, and they were measuring tools. At the end of the day, he could walk off the court with his head high because he had played well against the best.

“But when you play Class 3-A football (Manitou Springs has an enrollment of about 400 and Colorado divisions run through 6-A), you only see 3-A players and you don’t know how you would stand up against the best.”

The answer is very well, though the basketball bug remains. Armour played in five games for Coach Mike Montgomery after last season’s Blockbuster Bowl victory, scoring only three points in 13 minutes. He plans to return to basketball after the football season.

He also holds a 3.5 average, majoring in public policy, and works in outreach programs with church groups.

“We’ve held workshops for kids in Oakland, trying to get them interested in higher education, and we brought the kids to Stanford,” Armour says. “To see the faces of those kids light up, well, nothing is more moving.”

The idea is not necessarily to be a sort of Renaissance man. That’s the kind of ‘90s stereotype he resists.

“I just like to do a lot of different things,” Armour says simply. “It’s like my dad said, ‘Memories you have will be pretty much proportional to the number of things you did.’ ”

Armour is making memories for himself. And for Stanford.