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The Refusal 1983 — John Elway, the Colts, and the QB Class That Changed Everything" · Sports History Network

• 0:47
  On April 25, 1983, one day before the National Football League draft, John Elway sat down and wrote a letter to the Baltimore Colts, or rather his agent Marvin Dimoff does, on Elway's behalf.
• 1:01
  The letter is polite, direct and devastating.
• 1:04
  It says essentially, do not draft me.
• 1:07
  I will not play for you.
• 1:09
  I will play baseball instead.
• 1:11
  I'm serious now.
• 1:12
  The Colts have the first pick.
• 1:14
  They've gone.081 in the strike shortened 1982 season.
• 1:18
  And their head coach, Frank Kush, was sued for a million dollars by a punter at Arizona State who claimed Kush punched him in the face.
• 1:26
  Their owner, Robert Irsay, was a volatile alcoholic who once traded hall of Fame tight end in the prime of his career.
• 1:34
  The franchise is by any measure a disaster.
• 1:38
  At this point, the letter changes nothing.
• 1:40
  On April 26, 1983, Commissioner Pete Roselle steps to the podium at the New York Sheridan and announces.
• 1:48
  With the first pick in the 1983 NFL Draft, the Baltimore Colts select John Elway.
• 1:54
  Quarterback Stanford Elway is at home in California.
• 1:58
  He doesn't smile, he doesn't put on a Colts cap.
• 2:02
  He does tells the cameras, I have to make a decision because between football and baseball, the most consequential draft standoff in NFL history has just begun.
• 2:14
  To understand why John Elway refused to play for Baltimore, you have to understand what the Baltimore Colts were in 1982.
• 2:21
  For most of the 1970s, the Baltimore Colts were one of the NFL's model franchises.
• 2:26
  Johnny Unitis had built the foundation.
• 2:28
  Burt Jones, the 1976 NFL MVP, sustained it.
• 2:32
  And the Colts won three straight division titles from 1975-77.
• 2:36
  Memorial Stadium was one of the loudest places in football.
• 2:40
  And then the wheels came off.
• 2:41
  Jones injured his shoulder in 1978.
• 2:44
  It was never the same.
• 2:45
  And by 1981, the Colts were 2 and 14, the worst team in football by far.
• 2:51
  And in 1982 they were.081 winless and a strike shortened season.
• 2:55
  The defense allowed more points than any team in the league that year.
• 3:00
  And presiding over it all was Robert Irsay.
• 3:04
  Irsay had bought the Colts in 1972 in a big trade with Rosenblum of the LA Rams and immediately began dismantling what worked.
• 3:14
  He fired coaches compulsively.
• 3:16
  He traded away stars.
• 3:18
  He inserted himself into the football decisions he had no business in making.
• 3:22
  Players despised him, coaches feared him, and Baltimore fans, once among the most loyal in football, started staying home.
• 3:30
  And then there was a head coach, Frank Kush, now at Arizona State.
• 3:34
  Kush built a powerhouse program on discipline and intimidation.
• 3:37
  His practices were notorious for their brutality.
• 3:41
  In 1978, former Sun Devils punter Kevin Rutledge filed a $1.1 million lawsuit alleging that Kush had punched him in the face during a practice, punishment for a bad punt.
• 3:55
  Kush denied it, but the suit still dragged on for years and the allegations followed him everywhere.
• 4:00
  He was fired from Arizona state in 79, and by 1982 he was the head coach of the Baltimore Colts, hired by Irsay, the one owner in football desperate enough or oblivious enough to overlook the baggage.
• 4:14
  Into this environment.
• 4:14
  The Colts wanted to draft John Elway, the son of a coach, the most polished quarterback prospect anybody had seen in many years.
• 4:22
  Now, John Elway's father, Jack, was an assistant coach at Stanford at the time, and he knew Frank Kush's reputation.
• 4:28
  He told his son and told reporters publicly that John would not play for Kush.
• 4:33
  Not for the money, not for the prestige, not for the first overall pick.
• 4:39
  Now, this wasn't about losing.
• 4:40
  The Colts were bad, fine.
• 4:42
  The rookie quarterbacks joined bad teams all the time.
• 4:45
  This, this is about a franchise that in Elway's family's judgment was fundamentally broken from ownership to the sideline.
• 4:53
  And this was no place for a 22 year old kid about to start his career.
• 4:58
  Now, there's a photograph that terrified the Baltimore Colts in the spring of 1983.
• 5:03
  It shows John Elway in a New York Yankees uniform.
• 5:06
  The pinstripes, the interlocking NY on his chest and a wooden bat in his hands.
• 5:11
  And he has a batting helmet pulled low.
• 5:14
  He's standing in the batter's box at Damansky Field in Oneada, New York.
• 5:18
  And he looks like he belongs there.
• 5:21
  And that is because he did belong.
• 5:23
  In the summer of 1982, between his junior and senior years at Stanford, Elway played 42 games for the Oneonta Yankees.
• 5:30
  And in the New York PEN League, a class A short season affiliate of the New York Yankees, he hit.318.
• 5:36
  He drove in 25 runs and he stole 13 bases.
• 5:40
  He led the team in batting average.
• 5:42
  The Yankees had drafted elway in the second round of the 1981 Major League Baseball draft, 36 picks ahead of Tony Gwynn, the future hall of Famer George Steinbrenner himself had called to recruit Elway.
• 5:54
  The Yankees saw a future big league right fielder and with power, speed and a kind of competitive makeup that you just can't teach.
• 6:02
  And when Elway told the Colts he'd play baseball instead of, he wasn't bluffing.
• 6:07
  He had a contract offer.
• 6:09
  He had a path to be a major league baseball player.
• 6:12
  And here's the thing.
• 6:13
  Elway understood that most draft picks didn't.
• 6:17
  The lnfl draft was a monopoly.
• 6:20
  One team, one pick, no options.
• 6:22
  You went where you were told and you or you didn't play at all.
• 6:26
  But Elway had something that no top quarterback pick had ever had before.
• 6:31
  A viable, lucrative alternative career in another professional sport.
• 6:35
  His agent, Marvin Dimoff, framed it simply.
• 6:39
  John is not saying he won't play football.
• 6:42
  He's saying he won't play football.
• 6:44
  For the Baltimore Colts, it was a power move that the NFL had never seen.
• 6:49
  A 22 year old kid telling the system no and having the leverage to mean it.
• 6:55
  Ernie, of course he was the general manager of the Baltimore Colts then and he was in an impossible situation now.
• 7:02
  The Colts knew that Elway wouldn't play for Baltimore.
• 7:06
  Elway's agent had told him directly.
• 7:08
  Jack Elway had told him publicly.
• 7:11
  The letter, had said it in writing.
• 7:13
  Every other team in the league knew it too, which meant trade offers were depressed.
• 7:17
  Why give up a fortune for a player who might play baseball?
• 7:21
  But Irsay, the owner, insisted draft Elway, trade him if you have to.
• 7:27
  Do not pass up the most valuable asset in the draft.
• 7:30
  Of course he drafted Elway and then he went to work.
• 7:34
  Two teams emerged as serious suitors.
• 7:36
  The Los Angeles Raiders and the Denver Broncos.
• 7:39
  The Raiders, with Al Davis, were always aggressive, but the Broncos had something that the colts wanted.
• 7:45
  On May 2, 1983, six days after the draft, a trade was finalized.
• 7:50
  The Colts sent John Elway's rights to Denver in exchange for Chris Hinton, the fourth overall pick.
• 7:56
  A future seven time Pro bowl offensive tackle, Mark Herman, a backup quarterback from Purdue, and Denver's first round pick in the 1984 draft, which became Ron Solt, a guard from Maryland.
• 8:08
  It was by the standards of franchise altering quarterback trades, modest.
• 8:13
  Hinton was a legitimate building block.
• 8:15
  The first rounder had value.
• 8:17
  But for John Elway, for a quarterback who would start five Super Bowls and win two and enter into the hall of Fame, the cost was negligible.
• 8:26
  Now the Broncos were not in an obvious destination.
• 8:30
  They had made the playoffs only once in the previous four years.
• 8:33
  Their quarterback situation was unstable.
• 8:35
  Steve Deberg, a journeyman, was the incumbent.
• 8:38
  Their head coach, Dan Reeves, was young and unproven.
• 8:41
  But they were a stable organization with a strong defense and a fan base.
• 8:45
  Desperate for a franchise quarterback, La signed a five year, $5 million quarterback, at the time the richest rookie deal in NFL history.
• 8:54
  The rookie season was humbling.
• 8:56
  Elway started 10 games, he won four, he completed 47 1/2% of his passes, and he threw only seven touchdowns and 14 interceptions.
• 9:05
  His passer rating was a dismal 54.9, and he was benched for Steve DeBurgh at times, including a playoff game against Seattle when The Broncos lost 317 and Elway watched most of the second half from the sideline.
• 9:18
  By any statistical standard, it was a bad rookie season, but stats don't capture what the Broncos saw under.
• 9:26
  September 11, 1983, the Broncos traveled to Baltimore.
• 9:29
  It was LA's first game in a city that he'd refused to call home.
• 9:33
  The Colts fans, what was left of them, booed him every time he took the field, and by halftime The Colts led 19 0.
• 9:40
  The boos were justified.
• 9:42
  Elway had done nothing.
• 9:44
  And then in the fourth quarter, Elway did what Elway would do for the rest of the next 16 years of his career.
• 9:50
  He threw three touchdown passes in 10 minutes and eight seconds.
• 9:54
  The Broncos won 21:19, and it was the first fourth quarter comeback of his career.
• 9:59
  Of 47 total 35 in a regular season and 12 more in the playoffs.
• 10:04
  The Colts and the franchise Elway had refused were eliminated from playoff contention by the quarterback they drafted and then traded.
• 10:12
  Now The Broncos finished 9 and 7, and they made a playoffs for the first time in four years.
• 10:17
  Elway's rookie numbers were ugly, but everyone whoever watched knew that the Broncos had found their quarterback.
• 10:25
  Now the 1983 draft wasn't just about John Elway, who produced the greatest quarterback class in NFL history.
• 10:31
  Perhaps six quarterbacks went in the first round, three are in a Hall of Fame, and combined they threw for over 2,200,000 yards and more than 1300 touchdowns.
• 10:40
  They appeared in 17 Super Bowls.
• 10:43
  They won seven, and it just almost didn't happen that way.
• 10:47
  Now Dan Marino fell to 27th, 27th.
• 10:51
  Five quarterbacks were drafted before the greatest pure passer in NFL history.
• 10:54
  The Pittsburgh Steelers, needing a quarterback to replace Terry Bradshaw, instead took a defensive tackle, Gabriel Rivera, Senor Sack, who had played six games before a drunk driving crash left him paralyzed.
• 11:07
  Kansas City also needed a quarterback, and they took Todd Blackledge seventh overall.
• 11:12
  Both Jim Kelly and Dan Marino were still left on the board, and Blackledge started 24 games for Kansas City, threw more interceptions and touchdowns and was out of the league in seven years.
• 11:23
  Jim Kelly went 14th to Buffalo, but only after the Bills drafted him.
• 11:27
  And Kelly had spent two seasons playing for the Houston Gamblers of the USFL before joining the Bills in 1980.
• 11:33
  Six he played.
• 11:34
  He led Buffalo to four consecutive Super Bowls.
• 11:37
  Ken O' Brien went 24th to the Jets, a pick widely mocked at the time because Marino was still on the board.
• 11:43
  O' Brien became a two time Pro Bowler and threw for over 25,000 yards.
• 11:48
  Tony Eason went fifth to the Patriots.
• 11:50
  He led New England to Super Bowl 20 and was sacked more times in that Game 6 than any other quarterback in super bowl history.
• 11:58
  And Elway, he went first.
• 12:00
  He fought it, he won and he became the face of an entire franchise.
• 12:07
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• 12:10
  1983 is our week.
• 12:12
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• 12:13
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• 12:22
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• 12:25
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• 12:29
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• 12:51
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• 13:13
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