Jumpin' Joe

We featured the story of Cal alum Joe Kapp's legal battle with the NFL in the last issue of the magazine. Here's a highlight reel from his days leading the Vikings plus a passage from the article.

Unlike most quarterbacks, Joe never ran out-of-bounds to dodge a hit. He’d either drop a shoulder and charge, or spring over would-be tacklers. They called him Jumpin’ Joe for his leaping passes and his propensity for vaulting over defenders, a practice the NFL cracked down on after Kapp’s knee caught a Cleveland Browns linebacker on the chin and left the man unconscious on the field.

When they weren’t thinking up new names for him, the writers made sport of Kapp’s uncouth style and seeming lack of prowess. Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray described him as “glacier fast” and compared his passes to “wounded airplanes looking for a place to land—in the dark.” A Newsweek scribe called Kapp a “big, belligerent example of everything a top pro quarterback isn’t supposed to be.”

“My whole image was not clásico—to say the least,” Kapp admits. “But I knew what I was doing.”

Read the rest here.