Call: Young, back to throw, in trouble, he's going to be sacked, no - he gets away!
He runs, gets away again, goes to the 40, gets away again, to the 35.
Touchback at the 30, to the 20, the 15, the 10, he dives, touchdown 49ers!
Drew: Ah, former San Francisco 49er, Super Bowl champion, NFL MVP, Hall of Famer, I don't
know what else I could put in there, Steve Young, whose new book, Quarterback, My life
- er, QB: My Life Behind the Spiral is joining us this morning on KSL Newsradio.
It's Drew Steele.
How are you, sir?
Young: Drew, I'm good, thanks.
I'm great.
I'm doing great.
It's good to be in Salt Lake.
Drew: I was just going to ask you, how's it feel to be back here in the state?
Young: Good.
Well, we get here a lot.
My folks live here, my brother lives in Orem, my sister lives in Provo, you know, we got
cousins galore.
So, we're here quite a bit.
You know, hey, look, this weather in October -- you know, ski resorts are upset but everybody's
super happy right now.
Drew: Yeah, it's not bad.
You know, I've been here for about three months from Florida, 30 years at sea level, and so
yeah, so being here - everybody laughs when I say that, 30 years at sea level!
Listen, when you're 4000+ feet up on a constant basis, you know, you tend to feel it.
I wonder what was that like, you know - you - because that was the first thing that came
to my mind.
So here you are, you're at BYU, football, you're 4000 feet up, and then you have to
go to other places, other stadiums and play.
So does that affect you?
Young: I think it was always an advantage.
That's why the Denver Broncos have always had advantages at 5200 feet is that, you know,
you just - people are not acclimated.
You come in from San Francisco, Oakland or LA and you play the Broncos from San Diego,
it's a big difference.
I always thought it was - you know, we suffered when we went to Fort Collins, and played at
Colorado State because they were actually higher - I mean, Gee!
Drew: Can you get any higher?
Young: Sure.
Sure.
Drew: Right.
"QB: My Life Behind the Spiral," Steve Young's new book and Steve Young joining us this morning
on KSL Newsradio.
I just want to let you know about this little inside information, maybe you haven't heard
about yet, but leftie quarterbacks, yeah.
It's not going to work.
It's just not -- has a coach ever told you that?
Young: That's part of, that's one of the big stories.
I went to BYU and Doug Scovil was the famous offensive coordinator, BYU was one of the
three - maybe Stanford and Miami were the only schools that were throwing the ball,
and it was really kind of a pro offense, it was very attractive, it was what I wanted
to do, even though I was a wishbone quarterback in high school.
I remember him pulling me aside my freshman year and really, it was one of the more deflating
conversations where he said, look, Steve, I just want you to know, I will not coach
a leftie.
I'm like, well, what?
Why would you not want to coach a leftie?
Why does that matter?
I'm just not, I don't think lefties should be quarterbacks.
I'm like, you gotta be kidding me!
You can't say that!
Drew: So what happened - so how did you work all that out?
Young: So what happened is, well, famously, for me, I finished my freshman year, I learned
how to throw the ball by watching Jim McMahon, and once I learned how to throw it right,
I was killer.
And so, Lavell said, look, you know, 8th string, you know, Doug doesn't want to coach a leftie,
in the end, you know, you'll probably play defense.
If you want to play.
And so I made the switch, and Christmastime, Tom Holmoe, who's now the AD down there, he
said, Tom's going to help you, teach you how to play corner and you can start doing drop
back in the winter practices, so I started doing that.
But I'd stay after, and throw with the quarterbacks because I'd learned to throw.
And it's like, look, I want to play quarterback.
And so I would throw, and lo and behold at the turn of the year, Doug Scovil takes the
job at San Diego State, so he leaves.
And in comes Ted Tollner.
And Ted comes down to watch us throw after practice and he says to me, why aren't you
playing quarterback?
I'm watching you throw and it's like, well because they thought I couldn't -- they didn't
want to coach a leftie, and he goes, that's stupid!
So he goes and talks to Lavell and says, Lavell, give me 30 days of spring camp just to - give
me half of them, give me 14 days, two weeks, essentially, of spring ball, and if it works,
great, if not, we'll move him back.
And Lavell said, OK, that's fine.
And so then I get those two weeks, and in those two weeks, Jim McMahon, who was - I
was trying to fight to back up - he was hurt throughout the spring, so I had all this opportunity
that came out of spring ball, and by the end of spring ball, I was backing up Jim McMahon,
so I had moved up all those spots, and then, that was it.
So, I went from a coach that tells me never a leftie to backing up by the spring.
Drew: Wow.
Steve Young, QB: My Life Behind the Spiral, his new book and he's joining us this morning
on KSL Newsradio, talking a little bit about his time here in Utah and BYU, and I have
to ask you this - you know, in other ways, maybe emotionally, some of the ways that going
to school in Utah and going to BYU specifically helped you emotionally?
Young: Well, I grew up - I can remember vividly, I was at elementary school in
Cottonwood, and we moved to eastern Connecticut from Salt Lake City when I was in second grade.
But I remember first grade, I wouldn't go to school.
And my mom's like, my parents are like, well, you gotta go to school.
I said, no, I don't wanna go to school.
Why not?
Well, I couldn't articulate - I didn't understand why but I didn't want to go away and take
the dangerous new situation at school, I just didn't want to go.
And I don't know what - it hit me between kindergarten and first grade, but you know,
so then the first couple of weeks, my mom walked me to school, and then would stay there.
And you know, finally after a couple of weeks, I got more comfortable and then I - she didn't
need to stay.
And in second grade, I remember my parents took me up to see my cousins in Sandy, because
they were going to go away for the weekend, and they were going to leave me at my cousins'
house.
I remember feeling like I was going to die.
And so as a kid, you think, OK, I don't know what to do about that, other than I don't
like being away from home, but it wasn't until my mid-30s that someone said to me, look,
you have childhood separation anxiety.
Like, you have it in spades.
And I was like, holy cow, that has been great news, because I had no idea what this was
that I was dealing with really kind of throughout my life, sprinkled in a lot of my experience,
and you know, I remember those experiences vividly.
Now, finding out that in my mom's side of the family, you know, my mom's brother and
his kids and even my son, everyone's - there's a few people that are touched by this separation
anxiety and knowing about it, understanding it, really powerful.
You can kind of work with it.
Drew: Right, yeah, that's part of the battle right, once you find out, then it makes it
so much easier to figure out how to --
Young: Yeah, you name it.
It was huge, it was huge.
And that's one of the interesting things in the book for me, at least, in telling my kids.
That's how I got started on this project, was that my kids were coming home from school
and saying, Dad, you know, I heard this story I heard today about you and Joe Montana or
-- and they weren't true, or they were off, or -- and I thought, my kids aren't going
to know the truth.
They're going to grow up and always be hearing stories from other people and I'm going to
have to be you know, correcting them.
I need to write it down.
I kept some journals, little -- but you know I wasn't great at it, and so that's why Jeff
Benedict, who helped me write it, really it was about writing it for my kids, that's the
only thing I was interested in.
I never thought that I would have a book to give out, and so over four years, I put it
together so I could hand them something for when they were interested or if they ever
were interested, that they could at least know what my story is from me rather than
hearing it from the street.
Drew: Right.
Young: That's how we got here.
Drew: Yeah.
Steve Young, QB: My Life Behind the Spiral is his new book, and he joins us this morning
on KSL newsradio.
So, earlier this morning on KSL, this was a question from someone in the newsroom who
was like, all right, you have to ask him this.
You mentioned you helped or at least tried to help talk Ty Detmer into returning to BYU
as a coach.
Is that right?
Yeah, talk a little about that.
Young: Yeah, so, you know, when we were making - Bronco left and we were trying to find a
coach.
You know, I had noticed in the pros, there's very few pro teams that have a history that
they can draw on.
There's a culture, there's a - what is a Steeler?
Whenever I'd go to Pittsburgh, it would be about their defense and their history and
they embraced it and in such a fundamental way, and I noticed that even if their defense
wasn't that good, it still led who they were, it defined them and it helped - and I said,
it really helps teams distinguish themselves when they have something to draw on, the 49ers
through the 80s and 90s, they can draw on these things that you don't want to lose.
You don't want to just leave behind.
There's too much that you can - it can inform you for success.
And so for BYU, I was really advocating for making sure that we - we drew on our history,
that how we played and how we threw the ball and - that we were offensive-focused.
And it doesn't mean you don't play great defense.
At all.
You draw on it.
That's how you recruit.
And so, finding a coach that was - that was - obviously there was some people that wanted
to run the wishbone and I said, as much as I respect the coaches, my opinion, not that
it mattered, but we need to really embrace our past.
And not because I was part of it, just because I'd seen the value in it.
And I think that Kalani was really focused on that.
And it was really a part of what he wanted to do at BYU and he was - and you
can see how he coaches.
You know, he goes for two at Utah, you know, people were gonna be - it didn't work, OK.
But people are inspired by it.
People wanna play for him.
He's going to be a great recruiter.
And so part of it was, you can't be independent.
It's a long answer, sorry for this, but I'm building up to it - you can't be independent
and a coach come in - new coach, and carry all that water, it's too much, look at the
schedule.
And I always dreamed that Ty would - I always said, when Ty was with me in San Francisco,
he was my teammate, no one knew football better.
You know, he didn't have the physical presence to go play kind of every day in the NFL, but
he played for a long time.
And as I played with guys, there's guys that just understood the game intuitively.
That I knew, you know, he was a great coach to me - from, you know, I'd come off the field
and he'd just say, did you see the safety, I'm like, uh, kind of, and he's - well, if
you just watch him you'll see.
But tell me what -- I've been playing for 15 years and Ty's telling me like how to read
defenses and so I knew that Ty was going to be a great coach and I knew also that he loved
the ranching and loved sitting down in Texas and never would get out of there.
So part of it was like convincing him, Ty - you gotta do this.
You know, you gotta get out of Texas, come up - it's a real rigor, recruiting and coaching,
but I always knew that he'd be phenomenal.
Drew: Right.
Young: So when Kalani and Ty and - sorry for the long answer, but when Kalani and Ty finally
agreed to come together, I was - I just thought, this is - this is the best.
It's the best thing.
So hopefully it works out that way.
Drew: Steve Young, joining us this morning on KSL Newsradio.
QB: My Life Behind the Spiral is his new book.
This is Drew Steele filling in for Doug Wright this morning.
And before we go, Steve, I have to ask you this question.
Little self-indulgent question, if you don't mind.
So you can help me.
Because I do this with everybody in the building, I've been here for three months, I love this
state, I soak every bit of it in, every area, all the little - from fry sauce to everything
else, I'm loving everything.
OK, so here it is.
I need for you to do for me what others have done in the building.
One or two - give me one or two of the must-do's, must-haves, have-to-do, you're here in the
state of Utah, you're living here now, give me something, some of your favorites that
I can't miss out - me personally.
Young: You gotta climb the top of Timpanogos.
Take a morning, start out about 4, and just get to the top.
Drew: To the top?!
OK, OK, wait.
How about for people who don't - who have a problem just getting out of bed in the morning?
Young: There's no ropes, there's no - it's not - no carabiners, it's a walk.
But it's a long one.
It's worth it.
That's one.
What else?
A lot of times, you know, I'd tell you to watch -- my freshman year, I was - I went
to Floyd Johnson, employment manager at BYU, and I said, look, I want to - Danny Ainge
was, this great team, with Fred Roberts and just one of the best basketball
teams that the state's ever seen, and I couldn't have afforded tickets as a freshman, and so
I said, if I could - asked him if I could be the towel boy for the opposing team.
If I could clean up the visiting locker room, like, sit on the bench with the visiting team.
He gave me the job, so I watched that whole year, from the bench, as the BYU basketball
season with Danny Ainge and so I just think to myself, what have I always loved?
And I'm sorry, you might not be able to do that, Drew, sit on the sidelines - sit on
the bench with the -- really?!
Drew: Listen, I'll tackle the mountain first.
And then I'll get back to you on the rest of it.
OK?
Good stuff.
All right, Steve Young, My Life Behind the Spiral, QB, the new book.
And listen, all the best to you sir and I appreciate a few minutes of your time today.