Cal’s No. 10 to No. 1
QB Bartkowski became NFL’s top pick after his career blossomed with Bears
Steve Bartkowski doesn’t have the greatest Big Game memories.
He relished Cal’s rivalry with Stanford, absolutely — the history, the Axe, public school versus private school — but he watched from the sideline, detached, as Vince Ferragamo completed a last-second pass to Steve Sweeney to give the Bears a dramatic win in 1972.
Steve Bartkowski tries to run past the Stanford defense in the 1974 Big Game. He threw a TD pass in the game’s final minute, but the Bears still lost.
Then they lost 26-17 at Stanford in 1973. And in ’74, as a senior, Bartkowski threw a touchdown pass to Steve Rivera
in the final minute to put Cal up by a point — but Bartkowski could only watch, again, as Stanford’s Mike Langford kicked a 50-yard field goal on the last play to hand the Bears a 22-20 defeat and end an otherwise uplifting season.
Bartkowski, who became the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL draft and enjoyed a 12-year pro career, still reflects fondly on his time at Cal. He led the Bears to a 7-3-1 record in 1974, revitalizing the program.
All these years later, he marvels at the skills of his college teammates — from running back Chuck Muncie and wide receiver Wesley Walker to a rock-solid offensive line that included Ted Albrecht, who later played five years with the Chicago Bears.
“I would have given anything for my O-line my senior year at Cal to go with me for my rookie year in Atlanta,” Bartkowski said last week.
Bartkowski spent all but one of his NFL seasons with the Falcons, toiling on mostly mediocre teams. He earned two Pro Bowl selections, but Atlanta made the playoffs only three times and had just one postseason win under Bartkowski.
His time at Cal, similarly, included an ample dose of frustration — but he clearly appreciated his time there.
“Chuck Muncie was the best running back I’ve ever seen,” Bartkowski said, “and Wesley Walker was the only guy who could outrun my arm.”
These words came out nonchalantly, without a trace of bravado. Bartkowski was big and strong and threw the ball a long way. That’s why the Falcons chose him when they did, to launch the 1975 draft.
Bartkowski, who turned 66 on Monday, stayed in Atlanta after his NFL career ended, including more than 17 years working in business development for DPR Construction. The large global contractor’s headquarters are in Redwood City.
Bartkowski and his wife, Sandee, recently moved from Atlanta to southwestern Montana to help their younger son, Pete, run a fly-fishing lodge. Their older son, Philip, remained in Atlanta, where he works for DPR. (Steve Bartkowski is still a part-time consultant for the company.)
Even if he maintains a touch of the South in his voice, Bartkowski owns Midwestern roots. He lived in Iowa until age 9, until his family moved to Santa Clara. Then he went to Cal mostly to play baseball.
What he discovered was a campus awash in turbulence and protests amid the final years of the Vietnam War. Bartkowski routinely saw riot police near his Norton Hall dormitory.
“It was a strange place for a kid who grew up with Iowa values,” he said. “Berkeley was quite a culture shock. We were in the middle of all that stuff. … Berkeley was the place people went and rallied around the idea of protesting.”
This created an uncomfortable environment for football players, to say the least.
“Nobody wore their letterman’s jacket on campus,” Bartkowski said. “There was almost a discrimination against athletes, in my opinion. … It was not a great fit for me. Cal was known more for academics than athletics, and I was the opposite of that.”
Bartkowski, a first baseman and catcher, earned All-America honors in baseball as a sophomore. In football, he split time with Ferragamo at quarterback as a sophomore and junior; then Ferragamo, partly because he didn’t think football was considered important enough at Cal (according to Bartkowski), transferred to Nebraska.
The timing worked well for Bartkowski. He viewed himself mainly as a baseball player — “That was my first love, I played football to stay in shape for baseball,” he said — but Ferragamo’s departure left him as the undisputed quarterback in 1974.
Bartkowski had turned down a modest offer from the Baltimore Orioles, who drafted him that spring. He soon sat down with new quarterbacks coach Paul Hackett, freshly hired by head coach Mike White, and plotted his path.
“He sort of changed my mind-set,” Bartkowski said. “I told him I wanted to be the best quarterback in the country. He shook his head and said, ‘You have a lot of work to do.’
“So we did a lot of work together. He got me to understand that no matter how good your arm is, footwork is what puts you in position to throw.”
The work led to Bartkowski throwing for a national-best 2,580 yards as a senior (a lot in those days), earning All-America honors and blossoming into the nation’s top NFL prospect. He became another link in the chain of great Cal quarterbacks — from Joe Kapp and Craig Morton to Bartkowski and Joe Roth to Aaron Rodgers and Jared Goff.
Bartkowski helped bring Roth to Berkeley, hosting him on his recruiting visit. Roth became the starting quarterback in 1975, started again in ’76 and then tragically died of cancer in February 1977. Bartkowski called him a “terrific kid, mature beyond his years.”
More than 40 years later, Bartkowski looks back on his Cal days through a different lens than he once did.
“As you get older, you start to appreciate the things you maybe should have appreciated earlier,” he said. “I just thank God for my time there. It opened up my world, and I treasure those memories.”