It’s Third for These Longshots : Musgrave, Brohm Are Unlikeliest of Super Bowl Quarterbacks, but They Can Dream

It should have been a night of fun, a game of laughs for Steve Young. No Junior Seau to rattle his bones. No Reggie White to smack his helmet. No Charles Haley to crash into his chest.

Instead, it was a night of aggravation, a game of frustration. Facing Seau, White and Haley can be bad. Facing Bill Musgrave might be worse.

It was before the 1993 season. Young, the 49er quarterback, was enjoying a night away from the pressures of the NFL on a suburban San Francisco high school basketball court, playing a charity game with teammates Tom Rathman, Steve Bono and Musgrave, a third-string quarterback, among others.

Just before the game, Musgrave disappeared.

“Where’d he go?” Young asked.

“Oh, he had to go speak at a YMCA dinner,” Young was told.

Young should have known better. Whereas Young is famous for his accurate passes and electrifying runs, Musgrave, a reserve for the last four years, is known mostly for his pranks.

And this was going to be one of his best.

When the basketball game began, a figure in a panther outfit appeared, the 49ers assuming this was the school mascot.

It proved to be an extremely obnoxious mascot. As the game proceeded, the panther would roam over and smack Young in the head, grab the ball and throw it at Young’s feet and generally make a nuisance of itself.

“I don’t know who this guy is but you’d better get him out of here or I’ll kill him,” Young said. “He needs to chill. He’s getting into my kitchen.”

School officials were perplexed.

“The panther is not even our school name,” said one of them.

By halftime, Young was thoroughly disgusted.

Then, the panther disappeared and Musgrave innocently reappeared to play the second half.

When he got the ball, Musgrave repeatedly threw it at Young’s feet, but Young never made the connection. Finally, somebody told him it had been Musgrave inside that suit.

At that point, Young had to throw up his hands. What can you do? It was Bill Musgrave being Bill Musgrave.

After all, this is someone who, when the team travels, will poke his head in the first bus in line, mutter something like, “Sorry, wrong bus,” drop a stink bomb and take off. He’ll pull the same routine at the next bus, then slip onto the third one.

“Those stink bombs really make people suffer,” he said with a demonic look in his eye.

Said 49er offensive lineman Harris Barton: “Those things can smell so putrid.”

So why does a 27-year-old like Musgrave run around acting like he’s 7? In a word: boredom.

“It keeps you occupied,” he said with a shrug.

After all, Musgrave is used to expending his energy on the field. At Oregon, he set 15 school records, including passes (1,106), completions (643), completion percentage (.573) and touchdown passes (60).

Selected in the fourth round of the 1991 draft by Dallas, Musgrave was waived by the Cowboys at the end of training camp and signed by the 49ers.

In four years, he has thrown five passes for San Francisco, completing four of them.

And that all happened in a Monday night game at Candlestick Park against the Chicago Bears. With the 49ers ahead, 45-14, Musgrave, then a rookie, was sent in to mop up.

He mopped up all right, putting together a drive that ended with a 15-yard touchdown pass to Mike Sherrard.

That upped the score to 52-14 and left Mike Ditka, then the Bears’ coach, less than pleased.

In all likelihood, the only chance Musgrave, the 49ers’ No. 3 quarterback behind Steve Young and Elvis Grbac, will have to mop up in Super Bowl XXIX Sunday will be if a drink spills on the sideline.

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Jeff Brohm knows how Musgrave feels. Brohm is the San Diego Chargers’ third quarterback, behind Stan Humphries and Gale Gilbert.

But Brohm isn’t as bored as Musgrave. Not yet, anyway. This is the first NFL season for the free agent from Louisville, who set a school record by completing 60.8% of his passes for 2,626 yards.

Brohm might not be a big name at Joe Robbie Stadium on Sunday, but he has been a big man on campus in Kentucky since his days at Trinity High, where he made the all-state first team and was named Kentucky’s Mr. Football and high school player of the year.

Brohm also spent three seasons playing the outfield in the minor leagues in the Cleveland Indian organization.

But when the Indians insisted he devote his full energy to that sport, he tipped his cap and left.

“They tried to force me and I wasn’t ready for that,” he said.

After spending his first NFL season as the quarterback of the scout team, the unit that prepares the regulars all week for the next opponent, does Brohm have any regrets about choosing football?

“It’s tough,” he conceded. “But it’s something you have to go through. I can’t expect too much. I’m just going along with the flow. It’s been a learning experience and I’ll be ready when the time comes. And I get to go to the big show (Sunday).”

For Musgrave and Brohm, there must be a time, after the lights go out, before sleep claims them, when they fantasize about an unexpected end to Sunday’s game. Young and Grbac, or Humphries and Gilbert, get injured--nothing serious, of course--and on comes the No. 3 quarterback to save the day.

Yes, Musgrave and Brohm admit, they’ve had such a dream.

And how does it end?

“Somehow, I just get it into the end zone and we win,” Brohm said.

Musgrave says that, in his fantasy, he throws the winning touchdown pass and it lands in the arms, “of whoever wants to catch it.”