The Cal 100: No. 13 -- Joe Kapp
We count down the top 100 individuals associated with Cal athletics, based on their impact in sports or in the world at large – a wide-open category. See if you agree.
No. 13: Joe Kapp
Cal Sports Connection: Kapp was Cal’s starting quarterback for three seasons (1956-1958) and was a member of the Bears’ basketball teams that won conference titles in 1957 and 1958. He was Cal’s head football coach from 1982 to 1986.
Claim to Fame: Kapp led Cal to its most recent Rose Bowl berth in the 1958 season, when he finished fifth in the Heisman Trophy voting. He is the only man to quarterback teams in the Rose Bowl, Grey Cup and Super Bowl, and he finished second in the 1969 NFL MVP voting. He was Pac-10 coach of the year in 1982 as Cal’s head coach, and he is in the College Football Hall of Fame and the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.
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Unpolished is the best way to describe Joe Kapp, who made up for a lack of elite skills with an indominable will that carried him and his teams beyond their apparent potential.
Kapp was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1970 with the accompanying caption “The Toughest Chicano.” The headline of the story read, in part, "Gentle, Fun-Loving Joe Kapp Says That Fights Just Seem to Come Looking for Him." His fiery, colorful personality made him a larger-than-life character.
He is the only man in history to quarterback teams in the Rose Bowl, Grey Cup and Super Bowl, and he did it more with his unshakable spirit than athletic talent. Kapp’s statistics were mediocre and don’t begin to describe his impact.
Kapp was Cal’s starting quarterback in 1956, 1957 and 1958, and the Bears were just 1-9 in 1957, with few expecting much better in 1958. They lost the first two games of 1958, then won eight of their final nine games to finish alone in first place at 6-1 in the Pacific Coast Conference, the precursor to AAWU, Pac-8, Pac-10 and Pac-12.
Kapp had only two touchdown passes and five interceptions that season, but he also rushed for 582 yards and five touchdowns. It was enough to get Cal to the Rose Bowl and place Kapp fifth in the Heisman Trophy voting that season. The Bears were overwhelmed by Iowa 38-12 in the Rose Bowl, and the Bears have not played in the Rose Bowl since.
Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics
The NFL did not think much of Kapp’s quarterback skills, and the Washington Redskins did not bother to try to sign him after taking him in the 18th round of the 1959 NFL draft. So Kapp went to the Canadian Football League. The BC Lions had suffered through three consecutive losing seasons before Kapp led them to a berth in the Grey Cup (CFL’s championship game) in both 1963 and 1964, winning the game in 1964.
That made Kapp attractive to NFL teams, and the Vikings engineered a rare and complicated NFL-CFL trade to bring Kapp to Minnesota in 1967.
In his third season with the Vikings, Kapp led Minnesota and its strong defense to the 1969 NFL championship. Kapp tied an NFL record by throwing seven touchdown passes in one game that season and finished second to Roman Gabriel in the NFL MVP voting. The NFL and AFL were separate leagues in those days, and the favored Vikings lost to the Kansas City Chiefs of the AFL in Super Bowl IV.
An unusual contract situation made Kapp a free agent after the 1969 season and no team signed him until the Boston Patriots did so two games into the 1970 season, making him the highest paid player in the NFL in the process. The Patriots went 2-12, and Kapp refused to sign a standard contract heading into the 1971 season and left, never to play in an NFL game again.
For his NFL career, Kapp completed 48.9% of his passes, with 40 touchdown passes and 64 interceptions, yet he had a 24-21-1 record as a starter and brought the Vikings to the Super Bowl.
He eventually won an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL regarding his contract dispute, and although he was not awarded any damages, the suit led to a revision of NFL rules and a multimillion-dollar settlement between the NFL and the NFL players union.
Kapp returned to Cal in an unexpected capacity a decade later. In December of 1981, with Cal coming off a 2-9 season, athletic director Dave Maggard became so impressed with Kapp’s passion that he hired Kapp to be the Golden Bears’ head coach even though Kapp had no coaching experience at any level. Sports Illustrated called it the “Surprise Marriage of the Year.”
In his first season as head coach, Kapp directed the Bears to a surprising 7-4, 1982 season that ended with the amazing five-lateral kickoff return known as The Play, completing a 25-20 win over Stanford. Kapp claimed the Bears had practiced a version of the rugby-like series that was executed in The Play, and in the postgame news conference, he uttered the classic phrase, “The Bear will not quit; the Bear will not die.” That phrase appears on a plaque near Cal’s current locker room, although there is some debate whether Kapp dreamed up the phase or heard it from an assistant.
Things went downhill from there in a turbulent four years that ended with Kapp getting fired after the Bears’ 1986 season.
In 1990, the BC Lions hired Kapp as their general manager, although he was fired 11 games into the season. Kapp was named the head coach of the Arena Football League’s Los Angeles Wings in 1992, but that team never played a game.
Kapp was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1984 and the College Hall of Fame in 2004.
Kapp was also an actor and producer in television and movies, appearing in The Longest Yard, The Six Million Dollar Man and Over the Edge, among many others.
Combative to the end, Kapp, then 73 years old, and fellow CFL Hall of Famer Angelo Mosca came to blows during a 2011 CFL alumni luncheon.
Here’s a video of the incident:
Kapp died in May 2023 at the age of 85.
Cal 100: No. 14 -- Kevin Johnson
Cover photo of Joe Kapp as Cal's football coach was provided courtesy of Cal Athletics
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