In less than a week, former Cougar and NFL superstar Steve Young will take his place alongside many of the greatest football legends of all time.

Although he spent much of his career following in the footsteps of outstanding quarterbacks like Joe Montana, he will soon be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

While he’s known since February about this honor, Young is just beginning to venture what that moment will mean to him.

“I don’t know what to really expect,” he said. “They say it’s pretty overwhelming. I’ve certainly gotten used to ... talking about it and ... thinking about the people that are in there -- my heroes Roger Staubach, Joe Montana, Bill Walsh -- a lot of people I’ve really admired."

Young said he expects more than 500 friends and family to join him Sunday in Ohio. Now with a wife and two sons of his own, he said his expects this trip to be memorable for his family.

“I actually visited the Pro Football Hall of Fame when I was young,” he said. “We were traveling cross country coming back from visiting family from Utah and pulled off I-80 to go to Canton. If someone would have said, ‘One day you’re going to be in there,’ I would have thought they’re loopy. There’s no way, so it’s kind of a neat thing.”

When Young learned of his election to the Hall of Fame almost six months ago, he didn’t first think about that family vacation; he instead thought about football memories even further back, he said. This honor has forced Young to contemplate his career, beginning to end, which he said he never had much time to do as a player with so many Super Bowls and Holiday Bowls in the mix.

“I agree that this Hall of Fame thing encompasses back even farther to when I was eight years old and playing a lot of defensive line,” Young said. “You think about the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and you start to think about where did it start. I’ve been playing for 30 years, and when did it become a Hall of Fame career? What were the pieces to the puzzle that made it that way? You’re brain starts to take it all in when you first pick up a football.”

One of the bigger pieces of Young’s career came at BYU, where he felt the pressure of following Jim McMahon and the legendary quarterback tradition. While Young led his team to the Holiday Bowl twice and led the nation in total offense, his climb from being the eighth-string quarterback took work.

In fact, he attributes much of his success at BYU to years of sweat, toil and hard work.

“A lot of it’s work; I’ve never missed a day of practice, and I didn’t give up until I got home after a game,” Young said. “I played hard because I had to. I wasn’t going to get 73 NCAA records [like McMahon], but I was going to get a few. You eat the elephant a bit at a time.”

Another elephant waited for Young when he reached the NFL. After spending only a few years in the league, his fate landed him in the lap of the San Francisco 49ers and behind Hall of Famer Joe Montana.

But when his number was called, Young responded with four passing titles and a world title when he earned MVP honors while leading the 49ers to a Super Bowl victory against the San Diego Chargers 49-26 in the 1995 title game. He also exceeded Montana’s Super Bowl record by throwing six touchdown passes in the game.

Much like his glory days at BYU, Young enjoyed the outpouring of support he received at his send-off party and fireside on Saturday. Although it’s been more than 22 years since Young finished his career at BYU, Cougar fans still embraced the hero who led the Cougars to two Holiday Bowls and the nation in total offense in the early 1980s.



Copyright Brigham Young University 1 Aug 2005