OREM — Gary Sheide is the Forgotten Quarterback of BYU. He is to BYU's legendary quarterback factory what Alan Shepard was to the U.S. space program: the forgotten pioneer, the forgotten first. And yet, if not for Sheide, maybe there is no LaVell Edwards; maybe there are no McMahon, Young and Detmer; maybe there is no 65,000-seat stadium.
This is revealing: On a recent morning, Edwards was asked about Sheide. After giving high praise to his former quarterback, he noted that Sheide had been included in a painting of BYU's great quarterbacks, which was commissioned a couple of years ago and now hangs on the back wall of his office. But as Edwards was saying this, he turned to give the painting a closer inspection.
"Wait, he's not in the picture," he said. "There's McMahon, Young, Detmer, Wilson, Bosco, Nielsen, . . . but he's not in there."
There's one more: Virgil Carter — who played seven years before Sheide and had nothing to do with the Edwards' so-called quarterback factory — also is in the picture.
The painting was unveiled at a ceremony a couple years ago, and all the old greats were invited back to be honored. Not a word was mentioned about Sheide.
If Sheide's own school doesn't remember him, chances are no one else will, either. A few years ago, Gifford Nielsen, Sheide's successor, was named to the college football Hall of Fame. Later, so were Marc Wilson and Jim McMahon. But not Sheide.
"That kind of hurt," says Sheide. "Gifford deserved it, and I was glad for him, but passing was less common before he was there, and I thought what I achieved was as good as what anyone had done in that time. That was disappointing. They'll probably put every BYU quarterback in there, but when the first guy gets passed up, his chances probably aren't too good down the road."
Remarkably, Sheide, who led BYU to its first bowl berth and its first national ranking, isn't even included in BYU's own athletic hall of fame.
"I took my son down to BYU the other day and walked by the football office," says Sheide, who recently moved to Utah. "We saw a (print) of the painting, and my son says, 'Did you know you weren't on that, Dad?' I'd heard that, but it was still kind of a shocker. They even put Virgil in there and skipped me and went to Gifford. I heard Norm Chow (BYU's former quarterback coach) was upset about it, and so were the other guys (quarterbacks)."
Why not? Sheide, the shortstop who got sidetracked by a football career, ranked No. 2 in the nation in passing in both 1973 and 1974, losing by one pass completion as a senior to Cal's Steve Bartkowski, who would be the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft (Sheide was the second quarterback taken in the draft). In two seasons he completed 60 percent of his pass attempts and threw for 4,524 yards and 45 touchdowns — on just 594 attempts (most of his successors would throw more than 400 passes in just one season). In '74, he won the Sammy Baugh Trophy as the nation's best passer.
Sheide was the test pilot in Edwards' grand experiment with the pass offense. Even before taking over the coaching job in 1972, Edwards had decided that the only way BYU could win consistently was with the pass. This was revolutionary thinking. At the time the pass was viewed as a gimmick, a necessary evil in third-and-long situations, if then. During his first year on the job, Edwards inherited the nation's top running back in Pete Van Valkenburg, so he employed a running attack for one more season and fashioned a 7-4 record, but all along he kept assuring Sheide, whom he was still recruiting.
"What you see is not what we're going to do," he told the quarterback. "We're going to throw the ball."
It was a gutsy plan, especially after the Cougars produced a rare winning season with Van Valkenburg and the running game. But Edwards stuck to it anyway and turned BYU into a passing team. Sheide was the guy he entrusted with making it work on the field.
BYU coaches had tried for three years to sign Sheide. As a California prep athlete, he was recruited by at least one school in every conference in the country for football. He also was recruited, to a lesser extent, as a baseball and basketball player, and was a late-round draft pick by baseball's Baltimore Orioles. Baseball was his first love, and Sheide believed he could improve his draft standing by playing the game in college. An Orioles scout recommended nearby Diablo Valley Junior College.
Sheide thought he was finished with football, but that fall Diablo football players and coaches made repeated visits to his house, trying to persuade him to join their team. Both of their quarterbacks were injured. After turning them down several times, Sheide relented, but only on certain conditions: No wind sprints, no contact drills in practice, no running the ball — the team would pass. The coaches agreed. Led by Sheide, Diablo Valley won its first four games and climbed to second in the national JC polls, but then he broke his wrist in the fifth game. Not only was he out for the year, he couldn't play baseball.
Sheide decided to play football again the following season, and this time Diablo won its first three games before he broke his wrist again. He missed another baseball season. BYU flew him to Provo on a recruiting visit. The fishing was good, the girls were pretty, and Edwards said they'd pass; he signed with BYU and never played baseball again.
The Cougars struggled at first. Sheide played well, but BYU had a losing record (5-6). Things looked even bleaker for Edwards and his passing game when the Cougars started the following season with three losses and a tie. But then Sheide got hot and the Cougars won their next seven games.
Sheide threw five touchdown passes to beat nationally ranked Arizona. He threw two touchdown passes to beat powerhouse Arizona State. The Cougars became a circus attraction in college football. Their gaudy passing statistics drew national attention. Sheide reminded people of Joe Namath — the sloped shoulders, the jersey number, the arm. At times, Sheide was too good for his own good. The Cougars rolled up such big, early leads that Sheide spent many fourth quarters sitting on the bench. He had 22 touchdown passes in the last eight games but could have had many more. He would have won the national passing title if the Cougars hadn't routed Utah in the season-finale, sending him to the bench early again.
"I always tell (Sheide), 'For a guy who didn't want to play football you were pretty darned good,' " says Edwards. "He was really very good. He'd go out and be 0-or-4 or something, then hit 10 or 12 straight. He had moments of absolute brilliance."
The Cougars, a perennially bad team, climbed to 15th in the national polls and were invited to the Fiesta Bowl to play Oklahoma State. Sheide was knocked out of the game early with a separated shoulder, and the Cougars lost 16-6. No matter. Edwards not only could keep his job, he could continue with his plan to throw the ball. The Cougars would become a national power; Edwards would go on to win 250 games; BYU quarterbacks would become famous.
"Gary's the guy who really got it going," says Edwards. "Without him, I'm not totally sure we would have survived. We started winning, he had a banner year, we got it turned around and we never looked back. I don't think I'd be sitting in this chair if he didn't get it going."
Does he think that Sheide has been forgotten? "Yeah, I do," says Edwards. "I don't know why. Maybe because he was one of the early ones. Everything was so new."
Sheide was chosen by the Cincinnati Bengals in the third round of the NFL draft, but by then he was damaged goods. He had a severe case of tendonitis in his right shoulder and elbow (he was rarely able to practice during his senior year at BYU because of the same condition). With the Bengals, he couldn't throw without experiencing intense soreness, nor did his passes have the same zip on them.
"It got to the point where I just couldn't throw," he recalls.
He performed superbly in the final exhibition game, but his coaches called for shorter pass routes to accommodate his arm. Injuries at other spots forced the team to keep just two quarterbacks, and Sheide was released on the final cut. A year later he was signed as a free-agent backup for Namath, but he was cut again.
Sheide wound up finding success elsewhere. After dabbling with coaching for a brief time, he started his own company, Marina Ventures, which has built more than 300 floating marinas on five continents in the past two decades. He and his wife, Sherree, raised five children (one attends BYU, another is serving an LDS Church mission).
Sheide moved his family from Virginia to Orem last summer, largely to be near family members and partly to accommodate the next-generation football player. Troy, Sheide's second son, is a star running back for Orem High, right in BYU's back yard. Unlike his father, he'd rather run than pass. He is frequently identified in newspaper reports as the son of the former quarterback.
"Hey, Dad, I got your name in the paper again," Troy likes to tease his father.
Sheide, who helps coach football at Orem High (his brother Greg coaches the basketball team), has discovered that people still recognize his name. The limo driver at the airport. The man on the street. Clients. "Out here in Utah, it's amazing how people remember the name," says Sheide, a wonderfully affable, humorous man. "In the rest of the world, if the subject comes up that you played football at BYU, and they ask your name, there are people who follow college football who remember. It's been fun."
Mostly, though, Sheide is the forgotten quarterback, the guy who started it all, then left town, built a successful business and was rarely heard from again.
"For me, it's good enough to know that I was as good as anyone who played here, other than McMahon and Young," he says. "If you look at the stats compared to the times, they were as good or better than anyone else's. That's enough for me."
E-MAIL: drob@desnews.com