Leaf Returns Bearing Gift For Rypiens

This is a tale of two quarterbacks just not the tale you were expecting.

Relax. This one turns out much better.

This one will be remembered, appreciated - even treasured - well after Saturday’s desperate experiment on the coarse carpet of Martin Stadium has been forgotten.

Sure, it was played out on the fringes of Washington State’s 38-28 loss to Arizona State, but it spoke far more eloquently about why football games are worth having in the first place.

Ryan Leaf, given a weekend furlough from his rather tortured initiation into the fraternity of National Football League quarterbacks and theproscenium of national celebrity, returned to the safe haven of Pullman on Saturday.

WSU coach Mike Price joked about suiting him up in the unwrinkled uniform of a freshman backup. Athletic director Rick Dickson volunteered to self-report the NCAA violation. Everyone shared a laugh.

As long as it didn’t mean forfeiting the Pacific-10 championship Leaf conjured up last year or having all those Rose Bowl rings repossessed, it would have been worth it.

Instead, Leaf one-upped himself.

He wrote Wazzu a check for $200,000.

Pretty nice. But the best part was that he insisted Andrew Rypien’s name be on it.

For in addition to providing the seed for a capital campaign to build an indoor practice facility on campus, Leaf’s gift will endow a football scholarship at WSU in Andrew Rypien’s memory.

And the gesture moved his father to tears.

“You have no idea,” said Mark Rypien, “what this means to our family.”

Oh, probably we do.

At the very least, we know what the example of the Rypiens has meant to other families in the Inland Northwest. We under stand well the worth of inspiration, the gift of a truly selfless act. When 3-year-old Andrew’s recurring brain tumors made it obvious last summer that his days were few, Mark Rypien excused himself from his 13-year NFL career to be a full-time father to Andrew and daughters Angela and Amber, and a full-time husband to his wife, Annette, who has been fighting her own battle with cancer.

Andrew Rypien died on Aug. 22. Ryan Leaf never got to meet him.

“I’ve been following what Mark and his family have been going through the past couple of years,” Leaf said. “You really don’t know what to say in a situation like that. I had the opportunity to meet him and his family in Coeur d’Alene one time and we missed each other. I really regretted that for a long time.”

“So did my daughters,” Rypien broke in, managing a laugh.

“My feeling was,” Leaf went on, “what can I do to let him know how much I appreciated him for what he’s done for me? This seemed like the right thing to do.”

Just what has he done for Leaf? After all, Rypien quarterbacked the Cougars a full decade before Leaf enrolled.

“I came to play college football here because of what he and other quarterbacks have done at this school,” Leaf said. “And what I am, what I have, I owe to this place.”

Rypien can identify with that. If his stay at Wazzu didn’t measure up to Leaf’s in the “Tada!” department, Ryp still threw for a bunch of yards, won an Apple Cup and used it as his entree to the NFL, where, in time, he would become a Super Bowl MVP. He showed his gratitude by endowing a scholarship of his own - in the name of his deceased father, Bob.

They couldn’t be less alike, it would seem - Rypien with his easy grace and back-porch manner, Leaf with his prickly bluster and the occasional social misstep. But they have a connection, and it seems to be empathy.

“Something like this speaks volumes for what Ryan’s about,” Rypien said. “Whether he throws another touchdown pass or becomes the greatest player in history, I couldn’t care less. He’s an individual who has given and cared.”

This is not the Leaf everyone thinks they know. Rypien took a stab at reconciling that.

“A million people can think you’re great,” he said. “But then you’ll come across somebody you have a hard time with and it’ll snowball into a million others who don’t think the same way. That’s the unfortunate circumstance of being in the limelight.”

Indeed, it took a visitor to Pullman maybe two hours Saturday to hear five conflicting versions of what Ryan Leaf allegedly did or said - or had done or said to him - the night before.

Hey, he’s not Beaver Cleaver. What of it?

Yet Price took the opportunity Saturday to recall Leaf spending three full days last winter putting together a highlight tape for his teammates - splicing in highlights of all the seniors, or whatever he could find of those seniors who hardly played. He even dubbed in their favorite songs.

“This gift today is tremendous,” Price said, “but that was a commitment of a different kind. He has unconditional loyalty.”

Sure, Leaf has more leeway in his bank account these days to express that loyalty. Whatever fraction of his salary and bonus this gift is, it’s still the second largest ever made by a former Wazzu athlete; a former football player named Marvin Hales from the 1920s willed a big chunk of his estate to the Cougs at the time of his death.

For Mark Rypien, the amount hardly mattered. This was about fraternity, legacy and friendship - the part of football that lasts.

“This means Andrew will continue to have a part in kids’ lives far beyond my time,” he said. “I can’t get over that.”

And for Ryan Leaf, there’s a residual bonus.

“Doing this made me feel real good about myself,” he confessed. “I didn’t do it for that purpose, but it has.”