Garoppolo’s inner circle all about family
SANTA CLARA >> They’ll all be here for Jimmy G.
Tony, Richie and Neal, the buddies who grew up playing foosball in the Garoppolo family basement in the Chicago suburbs, will have prime seats. So will Jimmy’s two older brothers, Tony and Mikey, and little brother, Billy, who have such a close bond that they all moved to the Bay Area to live near him. He even made sure his high school football coach will be here.
When Jimmy Garoppolo takes his first snap Sunday in the NFC Championship game, his inner circle will be at Levi’s Stadium to support the Midwest kid turned $137 million quarterback as he tries to lead the 49ers to their seventh Super Bowl.
“If only he was handsome,” said Doug Millsaps, his former coach at Rolling Meadows High School, “he would have it all.”
There is that. The Garoppolo looks, the chiseled chin, the twoday stubble and the “feels great,
baby” line he tossed with a flirtatious smile to blushing sideline reporter Erin Andrews after the 49ers’ 8-0 start.
Feels great, baby, to be inside the Jimmy G’s circle.
“It’s amazing,” said his best friend, Tony Taibi. “At this point now, we’re just happy, rooting for him.”
Sunday, so will the rest of the 49er faithful. The 28-year-old quarterback, in his first full season in the NFL, could be staring at his future across the field in the biggest game of his life. Green Bay Packers’ quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who should be a future Hall of Famer, already knows the trappings of superstardom, complete with major endorsements (State Farm Insurance), a $28 million mansion (Malibu beachhouse) and celebrity girlfriends (actress Olivia Munn, then race-car driver Danica Patrick).
Yes, there was a Maserati in Jimmy G’s garage and there was that, um, date with a porn actress that made the tabloids. But, his inner circle insists, he’s more Illinois than California.
“What you see now is pretty much what he’s always been, the humble, excitable, nice-guy type of kid — or man he is coming to be,” said Tony Garoppolo, Jimmy’s dad, an electrician who coached Little League for his boys. “We’re just so excited for Jimmy.”
After nearly three seasons backing up New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, Garoppolo was traded to the 0-8 49ers in 2017. They were 1-10 when he took over as the starting quarterback and led the team to five consecutive wins to end the season. But with great promise came a lost season in 2018 when he blew out his knee.
But this season’s meteoric success — he’s one of six quarterbacks in the Super Bowl era to win at least 20 of his first 25 starts — has 49ers fans dreaming of a return to the storied Joe Montana-Steve Young glory days.
“He’s kind of come out of his shell this year,” offensive tackle Mike McGlinchey said. “The position kind of glamorizes everything and Jimmy doesn’t want any of that. He just wants to be a great teammate, a good person and win games, and he’s phenomenal at all three.”
For all the gooey eyes on Garoppolo, he remains something of an enigma off the field. He’s never had a serious girlfriend and he shocked mothers everywhere when he was seen last year on a date in a Los Angeles restaurant with a 42-year-old porn actress he apparently met through social media. For the record, she reportedly called him an “f—ing gentleman.” To reporters later, he called being under the media microscope a “learning experience.”
It’s something his buddies don’t like to talk about except to say that “it’s another one of those overblown things. He’s focused on football, not trying to settle down,” said Neal Zeman, who grew up across the street from the Garoppolos and will be attending his fifth 49er game of this season. “He’s always been kind of single for the most part. My joke has always been, he doesn’t have a girlfriend, he has all the girlfriends.”
When Garoppolo comes home during the off-season, the phones of his close buddies light up with text messages to come to the Garoppolo basement where they play video games, watch “The Sandlot” or head into Chicago for a night on the city.
“He’s a very homey guy,” Taibi said. “He loves to come home and be with us. That’s what we love.”
The Garoppolo farmhouse-style home with white trim in Arlington Heights was always a raucous place. But for the most part, Garoppolo stayed out of trouble and learned how to be tough and humble.
“Being around especially two older brothers, I think they’ll always keep you grounded whenever you start thinking highly of yourself,” Garoppolo said Thursday afternoon. “We were always competitive with each other. It made for a fun lifestyle growing up.”
The basketball hoop in front of the Garoppolo house in a cul de sac on Walnut Avenue was often the scene of “super cutthroat” games of two-on-two between the four brothers, Zeman said.
“It was a battle. The brothers aren’t holding back,” he said.
Tony and Mikey were varsity football players, “big dudes pushing 6-foot-3. All the kids in the neighborhood were deathly afraid of them. We were like, wow, if you live with them you must be their punching bag. But I didn’t see too many fights.
They usually got along pretty well.”
And whatever wrestling matches he might have lost at home only bolstered his fierce protective instinct. Zeman remembers walking home from South Middle School when some older kids started pushing him around.
“Jim was channeling his inner hockey player that day. He stepped in front of everyone, saying something like, get the hell out of here,” Zeman said. “Jim stepping up was like having the force of all the Garoppolos behind me. No one wanted to mess with him. If you did, you have two older brothers to answer to. He was looking out for me. That’s his job as a quarterback and he’s been doing that from Day One, always looking out for his teammates.”
For all the rough and tumble, Garoppolo grew up in the suburban idyll. Easter egg hunts on Walnut Avenue were epic and the annual block parties weren’t complete without “Mrs. G’s” famous lemon bars. Her whistle also is legendary — it could be heard all the way to the park several blocks away when she signaled for her boys on skateboards to come home for dinner.
In high school, Garoppolo wanted to play linebacker like his brothers. But Millsaps, who liked to toss the ball with the freshman at the start of the season, thought otherwise.
“All of a sudden I saw the ball come out of his hands,” Millsaps said. “He was reluctant at first. One of his best friends was quarterback and he didn’t want to take that position from him. But I was persistent.”
Garoppolo quickly earned the respect of his teammates. He had such a presence, Millsaps said, that when the coaches were having trouble convincing the players to avoid the latenight festivities the night before the homecoming game, they asked Garoppolo to set an example.
“He doesn’t say a whole lot, but that’s the leadership he brings. If Jimmy goes home, everybody goes home,” Millsaps said. “We never lost a homecoming game after that.”
He credits Tony and Denise Garoppolo with establishing a solid family foundation and work ethic.
“They take care of each other. There’s no one that’s more important than the next one. I’ve coached for 35 years and you don’t see that very often with families and players,” he said. “It allows him to have both success and failure. It gives him stability, that strength, that’s something a lot of people don’t get.”
Garoppolo broke former Dallas Cowboys’ Tony Romo’s touchdown record as a quarterback at Eastern Illinois University.
Then, he learned the ropes under Brady, one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, adopting some of his mannerisms and pep talk slogans (Just watch the videos showing Brady and Garoppolo side-by-side to see the similarities: “Let’s go fellas, make ’em pay!”)
“He’s open. He’s one of the guys,” cornerback Richard Sherman told reporters last week. “If there’s a Christmas event, he’s not too big for it. If we’re throwing a Halloween deal at a bar and the whole team is there, he’ll be there. He’ll not be like, ‘Aw man I’ll show up for just a second.’ He’ll stay until the thing closes, and he’ll have conversations with everybody. He’s not too big for any one of his teammates, and that’s important.”
Offensive tackle Joe Staley even got Garoppolo to admit to a favorite song he sings when he’s alone in his car — “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” — and to belt out a few bars in the locker room.
On Sunday at Levi’s Stadium, Richie and Neal, Mikey and Billy, Coach Millsaps, mom Denise, and the three Tonys — his best friend, dad and brother — and 68,000 Niners fans will be there helping him get to the top.