Friesz has new memory to savor

John Friesz goes into the College Football Hall of Fame this weekend in the same class as Jerry Rice, so he’s not kidding himself.

“It’s a good thing he’s being inducted, too,” Friesz said. “Otherwise, they might not have sold out the banquet.”

There is also the matter of a rumored flag football game among the inductees and the chance for Friesz to throw a few Rice’s way, though he claimed he hadn’t spent any time loosening up his 39-year-old arm in anticipation.

“But it’ll make a good story when I’m trying to play catch with my grandson some day and I have to explain to him that I can’t because I blew my arm out throwing to Jerry Rice,” he said.

Deference and self-deprecation have no hall of fame or else John Friesz would have been voted into both on the first ballot. But Coeur d’Alene’s favorite quarterback has the credentials for this one, too – though to his way of thinking, his induction today in South Bend, Ind., has less to do with the numbers he put up at the University of Idaho and more to do with memories.

And not just his memories.

“The thing I’ve come away with talking to old teammates and coaches was the excitement in their voices,” he said. “Not only for me, but I really believe they feel proud – they feel like a part of them is being inducted, too, and acknowledged for all the good times we had.

“That was when football was fun. Every day was fun. Sure, some of that was because we were winning most of our games and successful, but everything was happy and good.”

When he left Idaho in 1989, Friesz was the most prolific passer in Big Sky Conference history and the Vandals had won three straight championships for the only time in their history. But it’s instructive that Friesz won’t elevate either of those accomplishments. The spade work with Vandals football, he insists, was done before he got there, by coach Dennis Erickson – who’s back trying to do it again – and quarterback Ken Hobart. When Idaho finally broke through and won the Sky for the first time in 15 years, Rick Sloan and Scott Linehan were the quarterbacks and Friesz a callow redshirt freshman.

Yet Erickson knew the best was yet to come, even as he fast-tracked his way out of town.

“He was a big-tall-little- narrow-skinny kid when he came here,” Erickson said, “but he was 6-3, 6-4 and had a great arm and had composure and you could see it. He had confidence in himself. He had that ability that is God-given as far as the game itself and being able to deal with pressure.

“He had that aura about him that made him special.”

Funny, but Friesz never sensed that aura.

He hadn’t been a starter until his senior year at Coeur d’Alene High School (“I was behind Scott Wellman, a great high school quarterback”) and received only two scholarship offers, from Erickson and the University of New Mexico.

“At the time, they had the longest losing streak in Division I-A football,” he recalled, “so I wasn’t real excited to be a Lobo.”

He had received a Dear John letter from another Big Sky school that offered a glimpse at the competitor Friesz tends to keep concealed under his easy, even manner.

It was from Dave Arslanian, an assistant to Mike Price at Weber State, and essentially what he told Friesz was that “I wasn’t good enough to be a Weber State Wildcat.

“Boy, it made me mad. I didn’t like to see it on paper. So I was always fired up to see those guys. I’m happy to say I tied a school record with six touchdown passes in a game against them.”

And yet the fact is, Friesz was nagged by some self-doubt all the way up until his senior year at Idaho. He had accomplished quarterbacks ahead of him at first, and then great teammates around him. Even after he took the Vandals to a Big Sky title in 1987, he said, “I was surprised and I wondered if it was a fluke.

“At times I felt I could play. At other times I just felt unsure.”

But by the time he won the Walter Payton Award – the Heisman for NCAA Division I-AA players – and embarked on an NFL career that would last a decade, those apprehensions had passed, even to the point that he never regretted not getting to show his stuff on a major college stage.

Friesz is part of the “divisional” group being honored this weekend, including Rice – who played at I-AA Mississippi Valley State – and small-college coaching great John Gagliardi. Eleven I-A players are also being enshrined, including Notre Dame quarterback John Huarte, USC running back Anthony Davis and Alabama linebacker Cornelius Bennett.

“Do I think I could have played at the I-A level? I guess I could,” he said. “But I’d rather have played at Idaho and won four championships in five years than go to a Pac-10 school and get beat up every week. It was a great feeling to go in to a game knowing we had a better plan on offense than the defense we were playing against.

“I just don’t know if everyone had as much fun at it as I did.”

This was never driven home for Friesz as much as it was in the pros, in particular his last year with New England, when one of his duties was to chaperone a young quarterback named Tom Brady and impart whatever wisdom he could.

“He asked a great question after a road game loss,” Friesz recalled. “On the bus, he said, ‘I don’t get it. Why can’t we play with emotion like we played with in college? Why is it so businesslike and stiff out here?’

“I didn’t have a good answer for him. I just didn’t know. It’s just different – it’s not fun like college was. I think that’s part of the reason Tom has been so successful is that he does manage to play with that emotion. He’s genuine about it and he’s got guys in that locker room believing in the team.”

As for John Friesz, well, he believes in college football, Hall of Famer or not.

“That was a great time in my life,” he said. “I’d love to go back. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

This weekend, he gets to do just that.