Much has been made, and rightly so, about the legacy of quarterbacks at Stanford University, but few schools in America can match the rich history of running backs who have worn the Cardinal and White. Brad Muster was a senior when I was a freshman, so the first great tailback whose career I followed completely was Tommy Vardell. A bruising back, Vardell ended his career at or near the top of must Stanford rushing lists and held the mark for career touchdowns scored until Toby Gerhart passed him a few years ago. If you weren't lucky enough to watch Vardell play, click here and be thankful you weren't playing linebacker or defensive back in the Pac-10 back in the early 90s.
Vardell's playing days are obviously behind him, and rather than running through would-be tacklers, he instead spends his free time wrangling sheep, goats, pigs, a horse, and a cow on a five-acre farm in Northern California. Last fall he was kind enough to spend some time talking to me about his playing days with Stanford and in the NFL. I know you'll enjoy our conversation, so I'll get out of the way now.
Go Mighty Card:
I’ve got a whole list of questions, but I want to ask first, did you get to watch the Oregon game this weekend?
Tommy Vardell:
I did. Boy, that was great.
GMC:
Wasn’t it? It was a great game, number one. Even if you didn’t have a rooting interest, it was a great game. Everyone’s saying, oh, they finally beat Oregon, but they beat ‘em just three years ago.
Vardell:
I know, it’s been such a sticking point in our seasons. They’ve ruined our season over and over and over. It’s been painful. Of course, when I played, we looked down the list, and Oregon and Oregon State were the sure wins on the schedule. Not as of late. They’ve been tough. It’s been great to see Oregon State have a great team and program also. Autzen Stadium, that’s a tough place to play.
GMC:
Was it tough when they were down? Was it like that when you played there?
Vardell:
Yeah, even when they weren’t good it was tough. It’s loud, it’s cold, the turf -- I’m sure the turf is better now -- but they had hard turf. There is nothing pleasant about playing in Oregon, particularly now that they’ve gotten so good. It’s a tough place. To go on the road and win like that, that’s a really big deal.
GMC:
A lot of excitement. People are excited. The Andrew Luck years were obviously great, but I’m almost more excited now than I was then.
Vardell:
I tell you what -- I think Hogan’s the real deal. He had two or three plays that were really exceptional -- where it wasn’t just being a good college quarterback, it was being that elite quarterback. There was one play where he scrambled out and ended up hitting the fullback in the flat. He was being chased down and he escaped. That was one. And there was another one where he was running to his left and he threw to his right -- it was a really tough throw -- and the threw it to Zach Ertz for a first down. That’s a throw that, not only is it difficult to make, but it is one most NFL coaches would discourage making. It’s just way too dangerous, and the risk of misfire is so high. For him to pull that off... I don’t know. I haven’t seen him play enough to know if it was a fluke, but it was impressive.
GMC:
That was one of the first things I noticed about him when he came into the Colorado game. We knew that he was a mobile quarterback, a running quarterback who could also throw. So you’d expect you’d see some bootlegs to the right, but one of his first rollouts was actually to his left, and he threw to his left also, but that’s still a tough throw to make.
Vardell:
It’s a really tough throw. He was impressive. Honestly, I see the runway for the next four years being something very special.
GMC:
Okay, like I said I kind of wanted to look at your time at Stanford and in the NFL, but I actually wanted to start all the way back in high school.
Vardell:
Oh, gosh!
GMC:
I’m wondering what your recruiting process was like. I know things are obviously different now than they were twenty-five years ago, but what was that process like for you and what eventually drew you to Stanford and Coach Jack Elway?
Vardell:
The process then was quite a bit different. Nobody at that time was packaging up their film and sending it off to schools. There were no websites to host those kinds of things -- of course there was no web, period. What happened was as a junior I started getting what I called “Dear Prospect” letters from different programs. These were not personal enough to include my name; they were form letters that they sent to recruits to gather information. They were kind of sending out feelers. Different interested institutions would send these out to a number of different players who were above average in high school. I remember getting my letter from Stanford. It was signed “Jack Elway” in what was clearly a woman’s handwriting, and along with that was a questionnaire that I had to fill out. There was a spot for GPA and SAT in there, the first screening of the recruiting process.
Interestingly, I assumed there were some coaches who came down and watched games during our season, but the recruiting season actually happened after the football season. They requested film from our high school coaches, and tried to see the players in other sports they were participating in to get a feel for what kind of person and athlete they were. I had several scouts, or I guess assistant coaches, come watch me wrestle. One of the guys from UCLA started showing up at my wrestling matches. He just wanted to see how I handled myself on the mat, and that was his way of gathering information.
So I was recruited by most of the Pac-10. I wasn’t recruited by USC, and I wasn’t recruited by Cal. But everybody else recruited me in some form, as well as the Ivies, and the University of Colorado, where my dad played football.
I ended up selecting down to UCLA and Stanford. When I was on my recruiting trip Jack Elway told me he’d quit smoking if I came to Stanford. I don’t know how much you knew about Jack, but he was a chain smoker.
When I went on a UCLA recruiting trip, I sat down with the counselors and I told them that I wanted to study engineering. They discouraged it and said it would be very, very difficult for me to pursue engineering and play football. I listened and was pretty well dissuaded, if that’s the right word, from taking that path. But then I went to Stanford and had the same conversations with people at Stanford, and it was the absolute opposite. There was huge support and encouragement and assurance and reassurance that this would be a great thing to study. There were a number of football players that had taken that route, and they wanted to see me take the path that I wanted to take. The two schools had two totally different approaches.
UCLA, at the time, was really good. They had won a whole string of Rose Bowls and were really atop the Pac-10. Terry Donahue was the head coach, and I remember having the meeting with him... I had just gotten out of wrestling season... I was about 205 pounds. I sat down in Terry Donahue’s office and he gave me the “you’re gonna take us to the Rose Bowl” speech as part of the recruiting pitch, and I kind of nodded my head and was excited about UCLA. But there was another recruit that went into the office as I was leaving. His name was Kevin Smith, I believe. He was an absolute monster. I had no idea what position he played, but he was probably 6’4”, 235 or something in high school. Just a monster. He came out about half an hour after I had my meeting with Donahue. I didn’t know what position he played, but I assumed he was an offensive lineman or defensive tackle. I said, “Oh, what position do you play?” And he said, “Fullback!” And I thought, wow. I think I better go to Stanford. But honestly, there were a lot of different factors. At Stanford, it just seemed like the values -- and UCLA is a great place, and I couldn’t have gone wrong either way -- but there was something about the Stanford way and the approach that seemed almost familiar to me. There was a kind of shared value system that was evident even at 18 that I recognized probably intuitively. Stanford had just gone to the Gator Bowl, which was great, but they didn’t have the history of winning that UCLA had at that time, but clearly it was the best decision of my life.
GMC:
So what were those first few years like playing under Coach Elway? What type of coach was he? And by the way, did he ever give up smoking for you?
Vardell:
(Laughing) No, he never gave up smoking! In fact, it was pretty amusing now that I look back on it. First of all, not to date myself, but we were watching reel-to-reel film. We would go into the offensive meeting room, and we would have the entire offense crammed into a pretty small room. There were no windows, and there was no ventilation, and Jack would chain smoke. Nobody thought twice about it! We had the reel-to-reel films going, and if you’ve ever watched film in a football setting, they run the film back and forth, back and forth, so you have this clicking sound -- backward and forward -- and you’d have the humming of the projector and it was almost impossible to stay awake. You’re already sleep deprived because you’re up doing problem sets at night, and then you’d walk into this sixty by twenty building with all these big, hot bodies in football gear, with this cloud of smoke, watching films with this humming sound. You’re watching this film, and it looks like headlights in the fog...
GMC:
Shining through the clouds of smoke, right?
Vardell:
Yeah, yeah. My younger years I just played on the scout team. I really didn’t even know the offense. There was more of a separation between the younger guys and the guys that were playing. As a redshirt, I pretty well just sat there and looked at the other team’s plays to see which plays I was gonna run that week in practice. There were some good years, and there were obviously some great players on the team, but it was in a lot of ways uneventful because I wasn’t playing.
GMC:
So when Denny Green was hired before the 1989 season, that was your second year playing. Even though the team won only three games that first year, from the outside you could really see that he was dramatically changing the program.
Vardell:
Well...
GMC:
Do you disagree with that?
Vardell:
No, I totally agree. Early on we were called the best 3-8 team in the nation. I’m not sure what I thought about that. It was kind of a back-handed compliment. But when Denny came in, it completely changed the atmosphere of the program and our approach. You have to remember, Denny’s coaching staff was an all-star cast. You had Denny, you had Willie Shaw, you had Tyrone Willingham, you had Ron Turner, Brian Billick, the list goes on. These were a set of coaches who were phenomenal, and they ended up doing wonderful things post Stanford. They came in, and it was all business.
I can remember Coach Willingham walking into the weight room. I was there with one of my buddies, Todd Burton, who was also a running back. We were kind of joking around and having fun in the weight room, and this guy comes walking in with a long, groovy leather jacket. It was Coach Willingham. I don’t know where he got this jacket, but it was from the fifties at best. He came in, and I didn’t know who he was. Of course, I knew Denny, but I didn’t know this guy. He had these great big wide eyes, and they were wide open, and he was looking at us. He introduced himself, and we said hi and kind of made a joke. He didn’t crack a smile. He was just staring at us, and then he leaned into us and said we were being too “loosey-goosey.” And from that point on I knew that Tyrone meant business. He ended up being such a great coach.
The entire coaching staff put together a program that was backed by things that I believed in, principles that I believed in, and it allowed me to really push myself and spread my wings personally -- not just me, but everybody. They were ideals that made sense and that we could really sink our teeth into. What they did is they came in and exploited Stanford football’s most valuable asset, all the intangibles of the game. There are lot of teams that are big, strong, and fast. Certainly Stanford could keep up in that respect, but if you matched Stanford against other teams just on the basis of physical capabilities and talent, it would be a wash or even a disadvantage at times. But the greatest asset that the Stanford program has is the individual player’s ability to maximize his talent on the field through...
GMC:
Perseverance and hard work and dedication?
Vardell:
Exactly, and through precision and concentration and mistake-free football. When I say precision... if there’s a ten-yard route that’s called, you don’t break it at nine and a half, you don’t break it at ten and a half, you break it exactly at ten. The requirement that we be precise, this absolute dedication to the finest details of the game, and that level of accountability and being able to think on the field and execute and be disciplined enough mentally not to be distracted on the field or off... these were things that they preached and really pushed us to focus on as we developed athletically. So on the one hand, we had our commitment physically and athletically on the field, but the greatest accelerator of our athleticism were these principles that we brought into our everyday life as we trained as a Stanford athlete. Their belief was that there is no difference between social life, athletic life, and academic life. You can’t be an unreliable friend and then expect to go out and be a reliable teammate. You can’t be lax in your academics and not pursue excellence there, and then expect to achieve excellence on the football field. There weren’t three different buckets of life, it was all one. We had to develop each of those areas simultaneously. It was an interesting approach and something that I believed in very much. I truly believed in that approach, which was something that also showed up with the 49ers. Very similar principles, and of course that’s where Denny Green had come from. But I believe that for the Stanford athlete, this approach is the greatest accelerator of athletic feats on the field. We could train as much as we wanted at getting bigger and stronger and faster, but that was the asset that would ultimately give Stanford an edge on the field. It took a while to turn the program around built on these principles, but we were able to do it.
GMC:
Those values really spoke to you. I’m obviously not asking you to name any names, but do you feel like there were players on the team that didn’t buy into that, or was this something where everybody was on board?
Vardell:
The train was leaving the station, and if you weren’t on board then it took off without you. So yeah, everybody was on the same page. The older guys made sure of that.
GMC:
One thing you mentioned when you were talking about the team under Elway, there was a clear... well, division seems like a negative word... maybe a separation between the young players and the older players. Was that true as much under Denny Green? One of the changes that we saw from the outside was that he was more about playing the best players, not redshirting people, running people through the program, and putting the best players out on the field. Is that accurate?
Vardell:
Yeah, it is accurate. Denny played people a lot younger and was even willing to develop younger players in real time. And you’re right -- division is a negative term. It’s not to say there was division in the team, because there wasn’t at all. It was a very good program under Jack Elway, and there was a lot of unity on the team. Our roles were just more clearly delineated. I was a support player, I wasn’t a contributor, and those roles were more clearly defined.
GMC:
So the following season, as things started to turn and there was more success, there was obviously the big upset at South Bend over Notre Dame. Aside from your four touchdowns, what are your memories from that game?
Vardell:
I can remember the night before really trying to make space in my own mind for a victory. It’s interesting because sometimes even though you want something, you haven’t really made space for it in your mindset. I remember thinking, am I ready to play? Yes. Do I think we can win? And I would say yes, but in my heart of hearts I wasn’t really sure. I had to work on myself to break down whatever it was that was stopping me from embracing that through my entire being. Not to get too metaphysical, if you will, but I had a lot of mental battles. I had to overcome my own perceptions of myself and our team going into Notre Dame -- and really throughout my career. Because every time you define yourself as being something, you put limits around yourself, and that’s dangerous. It took me a little while, prior to the game, to get in a spot where I felt like, yes, we can beat Notre Dame, and in my heart of hearts, if we beat Notre Dame I’m not going to be surprised because I’ve already made a space for it.
GMC:
Did you have a sense that other guys on the team went in with that same frame of mind? Was this something that you talked to anybody else about? Because it’s a pretty daunting task to go to South Bend and face the top-ranked team in the country.
Vardell:
I don’t know what was going through everybody’s mind. When the game started, there seemed to be something not-so-daunting about the Irish. Certainly not because they weren’t playing well. They had a few mistakes, but we seemed to be clicking as an offense and as a defense, and very soon into the game I think that collectively we knew that we could play with them, and that we could make it a game, and we could beat ‘em. But there were so many contributors in that game. Of course, a ton was made of the four touchdowns, but really across the board there were so many people that played well. Big blocks, great runs, great catches, key plays. There were so many different players -- Jason Palumbis had a great game, Jon Volpe, Turner Bauer, Paul Nickel, Ed McCaffrey, Chris Walsh, Cory Booker -- the list goes on. I’m speaking just offense right now. Glyn Milburn. There were a number of players that came to play that day, that executed on the field and really had highlight reel type plays. Key plays in critical times of the game. And our offensive line was really starting to come into their own. Guys like Chris Dahlman, of course Bob Whitfield, and Brian Cassidy. Cassidy gets overlooked sometimes because he ended up getting hurt and not being able to go to the NFL, but he was one of the most aggressive, hard-nosed, relentless linemen that I’ve ever been around, college or pro. The guy was an animal, and he had such a killer instinct. He was very athletic and just got after people. You go down the line: Glen Cavanaugh, Steve Hoyem. These were guys who were really just starting to get in the flow of their game, and it was kind of the formative years, or the formative games of what turned out to be a very, very effective line.
GMC:
Right. And it was really the following year when that offensive line was getting so much talk. You were obviously in the games, but I remember watching in 1991, I suppose, it seemed like every game that was on TV they would put this stat on about the size of the offensive line.
Vardell:
Yeah, they were giant.
GMC:
The only offensive line in football that was bigger was an NFL team, I think it was the Vikings, and that was the only line in football bigger than the Stanford offensive line.
Vardell:
And the nice thing about that is that it enabled somebody like me to run downhill. To be able to run with a lean into a line and have a crack that I could attack was a good thing. It’s something that works with my style of running.
GMC:
The other game that I have to talk about is Big Game that same year, 1990. I was there in the stands, and it was obviously a phenomenal event for me. Tell me your memories from that game, whether they’re football-related or otherwise.
Vardell:
Well, I mean, it’s interesting. Cal is a great place. As an adult I’ve gone over there and actually enjoyed it, but as a player that place gives you the creeps.
GMC:
Why’s that?
Vardell:
Every time you go to Cal it’s because of Big Game. There’s something unsettling about playing away at the Big Game, so my nerves were always firing playing at Cal. There were so many different turns and momentum shifts in that game. I can imagine how exciting it was as a fan. I can remember that Glyn Milburn had a phenomenal game, and again there were a bunch of players that contributed. I spent most of the night blocking, but I had some runs also. What a great comfort, I guess, to watch John Hopkins walk on the field at a critical time at the end of the game because he was money. He always came through with the kick, like clockwork. If you can put the end of the game into anybody’s hands, that’s somebody that you’d want to do it. When he lined up to kick, I knew he was gonna put it through the uprights. To be able to go five years without losing to Cal was just a great team accomplishment.
GMC:
So the next year, that 1991 team was one of the best Stanford teams in years, and it was a great year for you individually as you topped a thousand yards, scored 20 touchdowns, and earned All-America honors. So at the end of the season it was no surprise when you were drafted ninth overall in the NFL draft, but I’m wondering -- was it during that senior season when you realized you were good enough to play in the NFL, or was that something that you had always thought about?
Vardell:
I never thought about the NFL until Denny Green pulled me aside, I think during my junior year, and said that I needed to think like that and to work toward it. I wasn’t one of these kids that was in the backyard pretending I was an NFL player. I didn’t play like that for whatever reason. I really just kind of took each moment for what it was. So with that in mind, no, I did not think of myself as an NFL player. Again, I kind of went through different stages, the way that people thought about me and the way I thought about myself. I came in as, certainly, an above average player, obviously good enough to get a scholarship to Stanford, but I wasn’t blessed with that athleticism, that pure athleticism you see occasionally. Probably ten or twenty percent of the players in the NFL are pure athletes. I think the rest of them are good athletes that have worked really hard, and I was in that camp. So when I came in, I was just a guy. There were a lot of players who were just above average athletes, and there was a lot of work that went into our development, a tremendous amount of work that went into our development. I’ve always been a little slow to acknowledge or to recognize my capabilities, I guess. It’s more my personality. I was kind of cast as a plodding fullback. Back to the Notre Dame game, in a similar vane, I had to battle with myself with the idea that I could even break a long run. I’d been cast as this short-yardage guy, and that was great. Going into my senior season I thought to myself, can I break a long run? Sure, I can break a long run. But again, I felt something inside of me that was saying, “Ohhh, I don’t know...” So I had to push the boundaries out of the way that I thought about myself. So with that as a backdrop, no, I was not thinking that I’d be a first round pick in the NFL. Not even close. I was still battling my own limitations about who I was and what I was capable of.
GMC:
What’s interesting is that as the ninth overall pick there are a lot of expectations that come with that. What was that like for you to come in as a first round pick?
Vardell:
It was both exciting and very tough. It was exciting because I felt like I could go to that level, and I thought my game would translate. I wanted to pound the ball like I did at Stanford, that’s what I expected to do. So a lot of excitement going into it. What happened in actuality was there were three other very good All-Pro and former All-Pro backs there, and we all shared carries -- each of us getting five to seven carries a game, if that. We had Kevin Mack and Leroy Hoard and Eric Metcalf, and we rotated plays. In the four years at Cleveland I reached 14 carries [in a game] only five times... pretty difficult to establish any level of productivity with that few carries. It was very, very frustrating, particularly since there were other teams doing things much differently -- like I would look at the way Mike Alstott was used in Tampa Bay, and that was exactly the way I was used at Stanford. So it was frustrating. Very frustrating. In Cleveland, it was interesting, because in the short-term horizon I look at my experience in Cleveland, and I say gosh, that was tough. I ended up blowing out my knee. I was well-respected by my peers and by my teammates because I was getting after it, I was doing the right things on the field, I wasn’t making mistakes, and I was a big part of the offense. But from the point of view of the box score, I got more criticism. It’s one of these situations where I definitely, as I got farther and farther away from Cleveland, I have definitely gotten worse over time in the Cleveland fan’s eye. The characterizations of my time there have gotten worse, because you have a twenty-something blogger who was probably watching TeleTubbies at the time that I played -- who didn’t know the broader impact I had as a player and on the Browns’ organization -- and he looks at a box score and looks down the list and thinks...
GMC:
Here’s a first round draft pick who ran for only 300 yards his first year.
Vardell:
Exactly. And as a player you’re pretty defenseless in a situation like that. It was a tough time, but that’s just over the short term. I wouldn’t have outlined not being able to play in the system that I wanted to play in, I certainly wouldn’t have outlined blowing out my knee and missing the last one and three-quarter years in Cleveland, and I certainly wouldn’t have scripted the team moving to Baltimore and all the turmoil leading up to that. But over the longer term view there’s no other situation that I could’ve been in that would’ve forced the growth that I needed that put me in a good position today. Adversity is a great thing if you’re willing to let it form you and mold you into positions that you don’t necessarily want to approach. It’s not always welcome, but it’s for the betterment of yourself.
GMC:
So when you went to Detroit, you went through San Francisco, but you went to Detroit with different expectations. Obviously Barry Sanders was there. One, what was it like being in the backfield with Barry Sanders, and two, how was your arrival in Detroit different from when you got to Cleveland? They saw you as a different player, probably, than the Browns did when they drafted you.
Vardell:
Yeah, well I was a runner. Going into the Browns I was a runner, and I was planning to run the ball. I did, just in a limited role, in a shared role, and that was the experience there. After I blew out my knee and could’ve easily ended my career -- probably should have -- after that I was more of a traditional fullback. I needed to really develop my skills as a blocker. There would be times that I’d run, but I almost reverted back into the role that I had as a junior at Stanford. I had occasional runs, a lot of blocking, and short yardage. Mark Trestman had brought me over to catch balls out of the backfield, and that was the first year that they were going to put a fullback in front of Barry Sanders. My role was to block and then also to catch passes out of the backfield. Detroit had some struggles in their goal line packages, so that was also going to be my role. So I had a key role outlined for me, but it wasn’t the high-pressure role. Barry was the man, and happily so. There’s no better back that ever played the game as far as I’m concerned. So it was pure joy. My years in Detroit were pure joy. Blocking for Barry is one of the most satisfying experiences that I’ve ever had.
GMC:
And you were blocking for him when he set the record, is that correct?
Vardell:
Yup, that’s right.
GMC:
You must take some pride in that, being a part of an achievement like that, right?
Vardell:
It was great. There were a number of plays that I know that I was a critical part or had a key role in springing him loose. So yes, it’s something... I don’t know if pride is the right word, but certainly gratitude.
GMC:
This kind of brings us back to where we started. What kind of connection do you have with the Stanford program? I’m wondering if maybe you’ve run into Barry now that his son is at school there.
Vardell:
I haven’t seen Barry. I saw his son and talked to him briefly. I’m actually a family friend. You have to remember that Barry’s son was walking around the Detroit locker room when he was a little tiny boy. So I’ve been a family friend even though we haven’t been super active in keeping in touch over the last few years, but this is somebody that I’ve known for quite a while.
GMC:
So do you get out to many football games nowadays?
Vardell:
Season tickets on the fifty yard line. This year my attendance has been spotty because my little boy is playing football himself and we’ve had a lot of conflicts with game times, but I’m a huge Stanford fan. It’s kind of hard not to be, not that I ever wouldn’t be, but it’s been a lot of fun.
GMC:
One more quick question. Stanford has this quarterback legacy that’s talked about all the time, but there’s also a really strong running back legacy -- Darrin Nelson, Brad Muster, you, Glyn Milburn, Toby Gerhart, Stepfan Taylor. Do you feel a shared history with those players? You were the main back at a certain point in history in this same position as these other great players. Is there any kind of connection? Do you see these guys around?
Vardell:
I do, here and there. I have a lot of appreciation, particularly as I move away from the game. I have a lot of appreciation for not just running backs, but all of the other players that I played with. Particularly some of the older guys... we’ve completed that cycle in life. We were players, but now we’re husbands and dads and we have our businesses or whatever we’re doing now. There are a lot of really good quality people that go through the Stanford program, and I know that you know this. What a wonderful place! It just gets better and better the more I reflect back on the experience. But yes, anybody that’s in the position -- quarterback or running back...
GMC:
The marquee spots.
Vardell:
Yes. There’s pressure and expectation. There’s quite a bit expected of those positions, and the people that have done it successfully, or even the people who weren’t as successful on paper, it doesn’t matter. There’s a shared bond there that’s only forged by actually doing it.
[All photos courtesy of Thomas Vardell.]
