Sollom Finally Doing the Passing as a Rising Ad Executive

Ken Sollom was unable to sell himself as a starting quarterback at the University of Michigan, but he’s a first-stringer in the business of selling.

Sollom, a former All-Southern Section quarterback at Canyon High, has steadily climbed the corporate ladder in the last four years to become an account executive at Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn, an advertising agency in Southfield, Mich.

Married for a year, Sollom, 27, has settled into a life that balances stimulating work with domestic tranquillity. He couldn’t be happier.

“I love it,” he said by phone from his office this week.

Sollom redirected his goals after his love affair with football ended during his senior season at Michigan in 1991. Relegated to third-string quarterback behind two younger players--Elvis Grbac and Todd Collins--Sollom lost his passion for the sport and later realized his California-cool attitude had not served him well.

It was a difficult lesson to learn, but a valuable one. Instead of standing by stoically and letting others pass him by, as he had at Michigan, Sollom is determined to grab the brass ring in the business world.

“Hopefully, someday I’ll be the CEO of an advertising agency,” he said. “It’s something I’m going to strive for.”

Sollom is off to a good start. He is one of about 20 employees at his agency who work on the account for Dodge cars and trucks. Aside from his regular duties, Sollom twice a year supervises the stage and driving footage that is used to produce Dodge commercials.

“Advertising is a real exciting business,” he said. “There is a lot of stress involved, but it’s a lot of fun and the people are great.”

Sollom’s success comes as no surprise to Harry Welch, the former Canyon football coach who resigned after the 1993 season with 119 victories and three Southern Section titles in 12 seasons.

“He’s the type of role model that all of us would care for,” Welch said. “He wasn’t an altar boy, but he was someone to admire; a terrific young man.”

Sollom came to Michigan in 1987 as one of the nation’s most-sought-after quarterbacks, after a stellar career at Canyon where he played on two Northwestern Conference championship teams and was part of a squad that tied a Southern Section record by winning 46 consecutive games.

But at Michigan he never became anything more than a sparsely used backup. His only steady role was that of holder on field goals and extra points for four seasons, a job he welcomed because it made him feel part of the team.

Looking back, Sollom believes team politics hurt his chances of becoming the starting quarterback. But he acknowledges that the talent of Grbac, now the backup to Steve Young with the San Francisco 49ers, also played a part in keeping him on the bench. The writing was clearly on the wall before Sollom’s sophomore season when Coach Bo Schembechler announced that Grbac, a freshman, would back up senior Michael Taylor.

Sollom, who felt he had outplayed Grbac in fall practice, was crushed.

“That kind of hurt,” Sollom said. “It was something I had to live with.”

Sollom considered transferring but chose to stick it out at Michigan and finish his education. He earned a degree in communications in 1991.

“I was a little naive when I came in, not knowing that Michigan had a wishbone-type offense when I first got there,” he said. “The option was something I didn’t do much in high school. I didn’t necessarily have quick feet then. I was more of a drop-back passer.

“Because of that, I really thought about transferring. There are times I look back on it today and I ask myself, ‘What if?’ But it’s nothing I’m going to lose sleep over. It would have been nice to get more playing time at quarterback, but I had to play the cards the best way I could.

“I’m the type of person who won’t ever quit, no matter what the circumstances. All of that has helped me become what I am today.”

Although Sollom got along with his coaches at Michigan, he wishes he had been more assertive. He carried himself in a quiet, confident manner--as he had at Canyon--but in the process got lost in the Wolverines’ quarterback shuffle. He expected the best and accepted the worst.

“I should have been more upbeat instead of laid back,” he said. “That’s something that I’ve learned.”

*

Through the frustration, Sollom experienced his share of good times at Michigan. He played in four bowl games, including three Rose Bowls. He made many friends and contacts. And he met his future wife at an Ann Arbor party in the spring of 1990.

Sollom and some of his football buddies already had been to five parties when they decided to take in a sixth. The 6-foot-2 quarterback began talking to Dianne Hall, a 6-1 basketball player from rival Michigan State, and the two have been talking with each other ever since. The couple, who married last year in California, reside in Walled Lake, Mich., a bucolic community where you need a tractor to mow the lawn.

One of Sollom’s favorite activities in college was attending his girlfriend’s basketball games at Michigan State while wearing his Michigan letterman jacket.

“I would get a lot of stares,” he recalled.

Sollom was recruited by and played two seasons for the legendary Schembechler, who resigned as Michigan’s coach because of health reasons after the 1989 season. Gary Moeller was Schembechler’s hand-picked successor.

Sollom said he was shocked when Moeller resigned last year after a drunken outburst at a Southfield restaurant led to the coach’s arrest.

“Like Bo, [Moeller] always instilled in us that you can have a good time, but be under control,” Sollom said. “When I heard about [the incident], it just blind-sided me.”

Sollom’s teams were 2-2 in bowl games, but the Wolverines failed to send Schembechler out a winner. USC beat Michigan, 17-10, in the 1990 Rose Bowl game on a 17-yard touchdown run by Ricky Ervins late in the game, leaving Schembechler with a 2-8 Rose Bowl record, the biggest thorn in his coaching wreath.

Coincidently, Ervins also played a role in Sollom’s last high school game. The running back was one of the stars on a mega-talented Pasadena Muir High team that defeated Canyon, 22-14, in the Coastal Conference semifinals in 1986, Sollom’s senior season. Sollom threw a critical interception late in the game and was sacked seven times on a rain-soaked field at Glendale High. Four of the sacks were by Chad Brown, now a linebacker with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

“I didn’t have a great game; it was sub-par,” said Sollom, who was named Coastal Conference co-most valuable player after a season in which he passed for 2,884 yards and 29 touchdowns. “That was upsetting.”

But not as upsetting as Canyon’s game against Antelope Valley in the ninth week of that season. The Cowboys, who had won three consecutive Northwestern Conference titles, could have set a section record and tied the state record with their 47th consecutive victory.

Antelope Valley, however, ended the streak at 46 by holding on for a 21-20 victory at home. Canyon rallied from a 21-0 deficit in the final eight minutes to pull within a point on a Sollom touchdown pass with 16 seconds left but lost when the quarterback was stopped short of the end zone on a two-point conversion attempt.

Sollom vividly remembers the game, and the final play. He wasn’t pleased that Welch had called an option after the Cowboys had mounted their comeback by passing the ball.

“I was kind of miffed about it,” Sollom said of the two-point call.

Welch, who second-guessed his decision, said: “Perhaps foolishly I called an option.”

The play spelled disaster from the start, Sollom said.

“We had a wide receiver to the left and we had him go in motion, hoping the cornerback would follow him across the field,” he said. “He didn’t, and they had an extra man on that side. I proceeded down the left line and I still think to this day that I could have pitched it to [tailback] Lance Cross. But it’s hard to say. It all happened so fast.”

While Antelope Valley’s players and fans whooped it up on the field, Sollom lay prone on his back just outside the goal line, holding the football to his facemask.

“I just kept wondering, ‘Why? Why didn’t I pitch it?’ The whole world came down on my shoulders then. At least it felt like it.”

*

Despite the disappointment of the Antelope Valley and Muir losses, Sollom, who was otherwise 15-0 as Canyon’s starting quarterback, has fond memories of his high school career. As a junior, he was thrust into the starting role in the final regular-season game after senior John Watkins suffered a broken left wrist against Antelope Valley.

Sollom assumed control of the offense in the second half of a 30-6 victory and went on to help the Cowboys storm through the playoffs and win the Northwestern Conference title by again beating Golden League-rival Antelope Valley, this time in the final, 9-7.

“I was mentally prepared,” Sollom said of his easy transition to starting quarterback. “When you’re going through the ranks with Harry Welch, he will definitely get you prepared no matter what string you are. . . . He’s tough, but he’ll make a man out of you.”

Welch described Sollom as a coach’s dream.

“He had absolutely an incredible arm, he was always very poised and he was someone who never would seek to have the attention directed at himself,” Welch said.

“He was one of the finest high school quarterbacks I had ever seen in 25 years of coaching.”

The Santa Clarita Valley had a surplus of talented quarterbacks in the 1980s. Sollom’s counterpart at Hart was Jim Bonds, who went on to play at UCLA but lost in his only matchup against the Canyon standout. In one of the most-hyped games in the storied history of the Canyon-Hart series, Sollom passed for 214 yards and four touchdowns to lead the Cowboys to a 42-32 victory before a capacity crowd of 8,000 at College of the Canyons in a 1986 season opener. Three of Sollom’s scoring passes were to his cousin, wide receiver Chad Zeigler.

“It was a great feeling to go out and play in a game of that caliber at the time,” said Sollom, who played before crowds of more than 100,000 at Michigan. “I still remember it just like it was yesterday. I remember the actual game, the excitement that the crowd created.”

Sollom said he felt intimidated before the game but settled down after completing his first pass. At that point, he returned to the huddle and remembers saying, “These guys aren’t anything. We’re going to take them.”

Bonds gained a measure of revenge in baseball season when he outpitched Sollom in Hart’s 5-1 victory over Canyon. Sollom, a right-hander with a good fastball, received some interest from colleges and major league scouts but chose to pursue football.

At one time, Sollom thought he would make a living playing quarterback. His father, also named Ken, offered to pay for Sollom’s expenses to try out at NFL camps. He wasn’t interested.

“After my experience at Michigan with the lack of playing time, I had a sour taste in my mouth about football,” he said. “I just never had the desire to compete at that level again. It was kind of weird. All of sudden it just turned off.”

Sollom says the only time he thinks about a career in professional sports is when he reads about the salaries athletes are making today.

Recently, Sollom was reading an article about Dallas Cowboy running back Emmitt Smith, when he came across a valuable piece of philosophy.

“In the article, [Smith] quotes something he was told by one of his coaches,” Sollom said. “He says, ‘A dream is a dream until you write it down.’ I truly believe in that.”

Sollom once had a dream to play pro football. Now he has a goal in advertising.