Time to cap running joke with a smile
We should have seen it coming. This crazy, unscripted and totally unexpected run to the Heisman Trophy began on a night no Denver sports fan will ever forget.
The now-burgeoning athletic legend of Christian McCaffrey was born nearly 17 years ago, at the same time Broncos quarterback John Elway played the final game of a brilliant football career. Denver trounced Atlanta 34-19 in Super Bowl XXXIII. Where were you on Jan. 31, 1999? Lisa McCaffrey cannot forget. She was trying to catch her
2½-year-old son. “There was this little boy with a blond afro, running around the field after the game,” McCaffrey told me earlier this fall. “Yes, that was my child.”
All of Broncos Country was celebrating a championship, and young Christian McCaffrey wanted to join the party in south Florida. With the stadium turf covered in a blanket of confetti as shiny and white as fresh snow, the little boy took off running. A blue Broncos jersey, No. 87, engulfed his tiny shoulders and hung almost to the ground. But even at age 2, with sandals — rather than cleats — on his feet, this McCaffrey was nearly impossible to stop on the football field.
Her young son could not outrun Lisa McCaffrey, a former college soccer player. And a photographer also caught little McCaffrey dashing through the confetti at the Super Bowl. He snapped a shot that appeared in the pages of Sports Illustrated. That’s the first time Christian McCaffrey’s running ability was celebrated by the national media.
A star was born. There’s no stopping him now.
After breaking a longstanding collegiate record of the great Barry Sanders with 3,496 all-purpose yards for Stanford this season, McCaffrey will be on the big stage in New York City on Saturday night, when the winner of the Heisman Trophy is announced.
As a voter for the award, I’m prohibited from revealing the specifics of my ballot. But there’s nothing that prevents me from declaring: McCaffrey deserves to win the Heisman.
Back in the glory years of Broncos football, the team’s starting wide receivers shared a running joke, the way friends often do. Rod Smith and Ed McCaffrey were both unlikely NFL stars. One black man, one white man. They were football brothers, as close as salt and pepper.
Smith was an undrafted free agent out of tiny Missouri Southern. McCaffrey was a lanky Stanford alum who joined the Broncos after stops with the New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers. Once they joined forces, Smith and McCaffrey were unbeatable. They were inseparable. And, sometimes, they could be insufferable, when