Luck remains down to earth
First overall pick by Colts in NFL draft shies away from spotlight and social media
STANFORD, CALIF. – Andrew Luck, appearing like any other slightly dishevelled, scruffy college kid in army-green shorts, blue T-shirt and brown leather loafers, scrounges in his pocket and produces a prized possession.
The soon-to-graduate architectural design major and sooner-to-be-a-multimillionaire pulls out ... a retro flip phone.
Stanford’s scholarly AllAmerica quarterback, whom the Indianapolis Colts picked with the No. 1 selection in the first round of Thursday night’s National Football League draft, is not embarrassed. Of course, as the fresh face of the franchise in the post-peyton Manning era, Luck might want to consider an upgrade.
“I don’t know how old my phone is, but it was only $10,” Luck says of his decidedly un-smartphone, a slightly battered Samsung. “It is a nice subconscious way of not having the Internet at your fingertips ... email, Twitter or Facebook.”
Of course, Luck can easily replace his dated cellphone with newer technology when he reaches the pros. Question is, will he ever take Peyton’s place?
“You don’t replace a guy like that,” he says. Smart fellow. Luck is no Luddite. He texts and uses email, but does not have accounts with socialmedia monsters Twitter and Facebook. In an age of tattooed, self-branded athletes, the 22-year-old son of law school graduates is a fascinating deviation, a downto-earth student who revels in such mundane things as being the “self-proclaimed champion of Bananagram in our apartment-dorm.”
A self-described “nerd,” Luck would rather pedal his bicycle across the sprawling Pac-12 school campus than roar around in a conspicuous sports car. Occasionally, he shares a 3-year-old Honda Accord with younger sister Mary Ellen, a member of the Cardinal volleyball team.
Hardly the rock-star quarterback, Luck recently had to borrow a bike because his was broken.
“It was so bad – no brakes,” he says. “I was glad I was wearing boots, because they had nice soles that I could sorta use to slide-stop.”
At Stanford, Andrew Austen Luck was a genuine student-athlete, with nary a whiff of scandal and a 3.48 GPA in a rigorous academic discipline within Stanford’s civil environmental engineering department. His parents theorize that his love of edifices might have been fostered by seeing “1,000 years’ worth of architecture” when they lived overseas, says his father, Oliver Luck.
Luck spent his formative years living in Europe, mostly in Germany, where his father worked in various roles in the NFL’S experiment with having a football league abroad. By the time he was 11, the close-knit family had resided in 13 homes.
His brainy father quarterbacked West Virginia from 1978 to 1981 and was a Rhodes Scholar finalist before the Houston Oilers drafted him 30 years ago. He played sparingly for four seasons, then earned a law degree with honours from the University of Texas, where he met his future wife, Kathy.
John Barton, director of the architectural design program, says when Andrew Luck “is in our studio, he doesn’t flash anything about being a football player. He is really down to earth.
“Other instructors come up to me and say: ‘You know, I’ve had some football players in class before, but Andrew isn’t like any of them. He is really, really smart,’” Barton says.
Luck, a “Legos guy” in his youth, has one regret: “I never got to do a stadium design for a school project.”
Jim Viglizzo, owner of Jimmy V’s Sports Cafe inside the athletics building, gushingly describes Luck as the “greatest kid of all time – the real deal.”
How authentic? This authentic: A tad goofy. Detests preferential treatment. Sits with freshmen. Playful. Unpretentious. Enjoys a beer with his buddies. Embodies the ideals of a Heisman Trophy winner; he twice finished as runner-up.
Last year, ESPN wanted to follow Luck on campus, including the classroom, for a TV feature. He limited the exposure, preferring to preserve some privacy and avoid disruption to fellow students, many of them exceptional in their own right. “I like to lay low,” he says. The thought of hitting the NFL’S instant lottery leaves the limelight-adverse quarterback wrestling with the notion of fame.
“I realize I’m very fortunate to hopefully make a lot of money playing football,” he says. “I don’t know if I want to abuse that privilege and make myself a larger figure than I am. I don’t know how to make sense of this ... (of) not getting too full of myself, realizing that I’m human.
“It is still a game. You’re not saving lives or curing cancer. You are providing entertainment. Maybe you can make someone’s week.”
In the NFL, Luck is considered the proverbial sure thing, but he has large horseshoes to fill with the Colts, where Manning produced at a prodigious pace during 14 seasons, including a Super Bowl triumph and a barnful of goodwill.
Ironically, their fathers – fellow quarterbacks Oliver and Archie – were teammates on the Oilers in the early 1980s. They remain friends.
A major reason the Colts released Peyton Manning was Luck’s availability. Still, it seems a bit awkward to the young quarterback that he helped usher Manning’s exit even after the former Colt had helped counsel him in the past.
“Weird, like: ‘How did this happen?’ ” he says.
A year ago, Luck could have locked in a $20-millionplus guaranteed contract as the likely No. 1 pick after his sophomore season. Instead, he opted to return to Stanford. He cited a desire to graduate with his class and complete the college experience, which includes a relationship with girlfriend Nicole Pechanec, a Stanford gymnast.
Of course, his team was loaded last season, too.
Under his leadership, the Cardinal were 11-2 and advanced to their second consecutive Bowl Championship Series bowl game, losing 4138 in overtime to Oklahoma State in the Fiesta Bowl. On the plane ride home, Luck sat with Jordan Williamson and consoled the kicker who had missed three field goal attempts.