The QB The Making of Modern Quarterbacks

by Bruce Feldman

  When Johnson asked Bark if he had any work he could give him, Bark offered him a part-time gig as the lead instructor at the weekend camps he had scheduled throughout the football off-season. He also gave the salty coach some advice: “You had [Stanford quarterback Steve] Stenstrom and your sons; you ought to coach QBs, because this Clarkson guy is killing it.”

  Johnson had amassed a lot of clout among college coaches for building a powerhouse in Orange County at El Toro High. He was up front about planning on going back to coaching in a few years, but he wasn’t sure if it would be back at the high school level or in college.

  “We were a really small, lean option—we couldn’t pay Bob very much,” said Bark. “Two things naturally came to my mind: Steve Clarkson. Kids need it [coaching]. My deal was, when they’re eighteen and off to college, it’s too late.”

  By the early ’90s, Bark had emerged as perhaps the most influential person in the Southern California youth sports scene, both through his publications and the camps, combines, and 7-on-7 tournaments he was running. Back in the ’70s, when he served as ball boy for the USC football team, Bark first noticed the advantage a budding quarterback could gain from growing up around high-level coaching. He saw it firsthand with Trojan QB Pat Haden, who was best friends with J. K. McKay, his go-to receiver who happened to be the son of USC head coach John McKay. During Haden’s senior year of high school at Bishop Amat, he even lived with the McKays. “I saw [that the] coach’s kids had a huge advantage,” Bark said. “My dad was a surfer. I’m not complaining. But I realized, the earlier you’re exposed to it, the quicker you make decisions, and the more reps you get, your feet are better. Your release is better.”

  That message was reinforced for Bark when then-University of Miami offensive coordinator Gary Stevens in the late ’80s told him that the way the college game was structured, with the NCAA limiting coaches to only twenty hours of practice a week, it was too much of a time crunch to develop a quarterback. “Unless you’ve got Bernie Kosar, who is basically smarter than the coaches, you can’t make up for your lack of fundamentals,” Stevens said.

  “He told me, ‘You gotta get your drops early. You really can’t get ’em up to speed in twenty hours,’ ” Bark recalled. “ ‘You need to come in as an eighteen-year-old ready to learn your plays and be a dude in the locker room.’ We’d write about it, but I’d keep thinking, ‘Where do I go to get this coaching? My high school coach is still running the Veer.’ ”

  Bark also researched that more than 40 percent of NFL quarterbacks were the sons of either former quarterbacks or coaches, a number that was staggeringly high to the former college receiver. But the more Bark examined it, the more it made sense—and the more it bothered him.

  “You shouldn’t have to be a coach’s son or a player’s son to be a quarterback,” he said.

  Bark recruited Johnson to handle the fundamental work at his roving camps. He also provided Johnson with the player who would eventually become his most successful protégé—a tall fourteen-year-old named Carson Palmer. At the time, the big seventh-grader’s dad, Bill Palmer, a successful Orange County financial planner, called Bark, asking for advice on developing his son, who he thought had a good arm and lots of potential. Bark mentioned a couple of viable options: Steve Clarkson, but that would probably mean a ninety-minute drive each way; and Bob Johnson, who four years later helped turn Carson Palmer into one of the country’s biggest recruits in 1997 and a future Heisman Trophy winner for USC. By 1999, when Bark created the Elite 11, a week-long quarterback “campetition,” Johnson was installed as the head instructor, which over time certainly elevated his “guru” status as Clarkson’s brand was flowering in the grassroots football world.

  “Steve always tried to figure out a way to scale himself,” said Bark. “Bob didn’t care about scaling his stuff at all. He charged $20 for a couple of hours. He liked being in the limelight as the Quarterback Guru.”

  The competition among Clarkson and Johnson and their protégés created an awkward dynamic with some residual effects. A few Clarkson protégés supposedly steered clear of the Elite 11 because they didn’t want to be coached by Johnson for a week—out of loyalty to their coach. Another Clarkson QB approached one of the Elite 11 coaches, Yogi Roth, and asked whether changing his personal QB coach would “help me with the Elite 11, since I know you guys don’t really like him.” (Roth, a former USC assistant, told him no and not to worry about it but was stunned a kid would be so direct about the tension.)

  Clarkson also had a pipeline into arguably the most fertile QB factory in the country, Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, located right in Johnson’s backyard in Orange County. Clarkson began working with Matt Leinart when he was a fourteen-year-old freshman after the Monarchs coaches connected the two. Clarkson also groomed future Mater Dei stars Colt Brennan, a Heisman Trophy finalist at the University of Hawaii, and Matt Barkley before he went off to be the four-year starter at USC.

  “Steve’s whole deal is, he made average guys good, and good guys very good,” said Bark. “And he generated hype and sizzle. [Mater Dei head coach] Bruce Rollinson doesn’t let anyone touch his athletes except Steve Clarkson.”

  In Northern California, another onetime college QB, Roger Theder, also got involved in the private quarterback coaching game. Theder was older than Clarkson and Johnson and had a richer coaching pedigree. As an assistant at Stanford, he had coached Jim Plunkett to consecutive Rose Bowls and a Heisman Trophy; at Cal, he had developed Steve Bartkowski into the NFL’s first overall pick in the 1975 draft, and later he helped make unheralded Jeff Garcia from San José State into a future NFL star.

  “I drive a Honda Prelude station wagon, the same car that I drove for some twenty years,” said Theder, when asked if he thought his approach to the business was similar to Clarkson’s. “I don’t think we’re opposite. My goals are different. My goal is just to make the kid a better quarterback. I think he [Clarkson] wants to make a lot of money.”

  By all accounts, including his own, Clarkson had.

  Google Steve Clarkson’s name and you’ll find a litany of jaw-dropping monetary amounts parents have paid him at different times over the past two decades, depending on the frequency and time he’s invested with a kid. A 2004 New York Times story said that tutoring for a year at Clarkson’s camps cost up to $60,000. In a 2008 Men’s Journal story on Clarkson, which detailed how he trained, among others, the sons of Will Smith, Wayne Gretzky, and Snoop Dogg, Clarkson got $700 an hour for private sessions, with a minimum commitment of a year. (Clarkson pointed out to me that he’s also coached the sons of FedEx founder Fred Smith and talk-show legend Larry King … yes, that Larry King. Both men have sons named Cannon.) In a 2009 Philadelphia Daily News story, Clarkson’s “cheapest” deal was $625 a month, which included forty-eight sessions a year but no actual one-on-one instruction. Clarkson told me his best bargain deal was now actually $650 a month, which included thirty-six sessions a year, not forty-eight.

  That deal was separate from what Clarkson made on the private-instruction side, where he had about two dozen quarterbacks, he said, adding that he had clients nationwide and in Germany, England, and Japan. According to the 2009 Philadelphia Daily News story, the starting price for his private instruction was $8,000 a month. And that didn’t include the two-day evaluation that each young QB must pass, which costs an additional $3,000 plus traveling expenses. Clarkson steered clear of getting into too many specifics about his rates.

  A friend of Clarkson told a story about how the private QB coach spent much of his fall of 2005. Clarkson would get on a plane on Friday (usually from Los Angeles) and fly to Philadelphia, where he coached a ten-year-old quarterback. He’d call plays in the kid’s game Saturday morning and then fly to Boston later in the day to review film and work with Harvard QB Richie Irvin, the son of a Southern California attorney. Then on Sunday morning, he’d board the first flight up to San Francisco so he could go over the high school film of a Bay area quarterback, Nate Mo
ntana, the son of NFL legend Joe Montana. Clarkson’s friend said the coach was making around $75,000 a week for the road swing.

  Clarkson chuckled when asked if the $75,000-a-week price tag was accurate. “That would make it legendary,” he said. “It wasn’t nearly that much—but I was paid very well.”

  Steve Clarkson’s marketing savvy resonated with eager parents and with media hungry for hyperbole and the next big thing, and it made him a go-to guy. In truth, he wasn’t just marketing his protégés but himself as a brand, too. He credits reading the 2001 Bernard Goldberg book Bias for opening his eyes to handling the media. “I don’t read many books, but it’s one of the greatest books ever written,” he said. “It talks about how media basically runs the world. I truly use it as a practice. You can almost anticipate how emotions will turn before it actually happens.

  “There is a story line and a script that you have to create, because there’s too many kids out there. How do you say this kid is better than that kid? I mean, who the hell knows? You don’t really know till they get up there [to college] and play, and then you have to hope they get to a program where their coach believes that this kid’s talent is gonna help get them their contract extension or their next big job. And if they don’t have that, they’re just another guy.”

  Clarkson’s Sistine Chapel was quarterback Jimmy Clausen, the youngest of Jim Clausen’s three boys. Before owning an insurance business, Jimmy’s dad was an assistant coach at Cal-State Northridge. Jimmy’s oldest brother, Casey, and middle brother, Rick, were quarterbacks at Tennessee, and both were longtime Clarkson projects. Casey was a four-year starter for the Vols, but he had underwhelming physical tools. Scouts saw him as an immobile pocket passer lacking arm strength, which was backed up by Casey’s going undrafted.

  Clarkson loved to tell the story for reporters about how he noticed young Jimmy’s prodigious arm in the distance while sitting with Jim Sr. at one of the Clausens’ high school games after the kid supposedly took an errant pass and fired it back—on a rope, 55 yards across the field, according to ESPN The Magazine. “Who the hell is that?” Clarkson asked.

  “That’s my other son,” said Jim, referring to his fifth-grader. “He wants to be a linebacker.”

  “He’s a better quarterback than both your other boys right now,” Clarkson replied. Once Jimmy got into the seventh grade, he, too, started training with Clarkson. It’s worth noting that Jimmy, like Jim Clausen’s other sons, was considerably older than the other students in his grade. Jim Clausen started Jimmy in kindergarten late, at age six, the same age his other children had been. He also held Jimmy back in the sixth grade, again to allow his son to mature more, just the way he did with Casey and Ricky. It was as if Clausen Sr. was redshirting his kids in grade school. Twice.

  By Jimmy Clausen’s sophomore year of high school in 2004, Steve Clarkson was practically writing the headlines for journalists. “If there were a LeBron James for football, it would be Jimmy Clausen,” Clarkson told the New York Times. “He’s truly a freak. It’s ridiculous.”

  Cynics snickered at the quote, especially the part where Clarkson used the word “ridiculous” in comparing Clausen and a basketball prodigy who’d already earned Rookie of the Year honors and become the youngest NBA player to ever score forty points in a game. A year later, Clarkson evoked the names of other iconic athletes to describe his latest high school QB project.

  “Jimmy has the leadership of Casey, the intangibles of Rick, and the skills of Dan Marino,” Clarkson told Sports Illustrated in 2005 for a story titled “The Kid with the Golden Arm.”

  The elder Clausen wasn’t shy about giving Clarkson credit for making his sons into college quarterbacks and conceded to the New York Times that all three of his sons were actually average athletes. “Steve Clarkson is a dream maker,” Jim Clausen said, using a term he also used about Clarkson in Los Angeles Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People issue. [Clarkson liked the description so much, he changed the name of his company from Air 7 to Dreammaker.] “There’s no way that any of my three sons ever get an opportunity to do the things they’ve done and have the experiences they’ve had if it isn’t for someone like Steve Clarkson.”

  In 2006, when Jimmy Clausen announced that he would be attending Notre Dame, he did so at a news conference at the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend after arriving in a stretch Hummer limousine with a sixteen-person entourage. There was a press release touting the news event. Clausen waved around three bulky high school championship rings. “In terms of entrances, Jimmy Clausen outdid Don King, Don Corleone, and Don Quixote combined,” wrote CBSSports.com’s Dennis Dodd.

  Clausen never did get any championship rings at Notre Dame. The best he could do was lead the Fighting Irish to a Sheraton Hawaii Bowl victory, and his team went 16–21 in his three seasons in South Bend. He had a good career but hardly a great one, throwing 60 touchdowns against 27 interceptions. His team was just 1–6 against ranked opponents. After the 2009 season, he entered the NFL Draft and was taken in the second round. The NFL career of the QB once compared to LeBron James amounted to 3 touchdown passes, 9 interceptions, and 9 fumbles for a Carolina Panthers team that went 2–14. Two seasons later, Clausen was cut.

  Jim Clausen may have paid Steve Clarkson a small fortune for a decade-plus of private QB lessons, but he probably made that money back in unspent college tuition, thanks to all three of his sons getting scholarships. After Jimmy Clausen signed with Notre Dame, Charlie Weis even recommended Clarkson to Fighting Irish legend Joe Montana, who was looking for someone else to train his own sons. The Montanas flew Clarkson out to their place in Calistoga Ranch, watched him work with their eldest boy, Nate, and after ten minutes were sold and told him he had the job. Nate Montana transferred to longtime Bay Area powerhouse De La Salle but couldn’t win the starting job. He attempted just 19 passes as a backup for his senior season and was completely off the recruiting radar. Well, almost completely.

  “When I moved back to California as the new head coach of UCLA, Steve Clarkson calls me,” Rick Neuheisel recalled. “He wants to make deals. If I take Montana’s kid, he’ll make sure that we get the next great one he’s got to come to UCLA. I said, ‘I can’t really do that, Steve.’ ”

  Nate Montana ultimately decided to be a walk-on at his dad’s alma mater but then transferred to Mount San Antonio Junior College in California, then to Pasadena City College, before re-enrolling at Notre Dame. He lasted there one season before ending up at West Virginia Wesleyan, a Division II school. (Montana also had a short stint at the University of Montana, too.) His younger brother, Nick, also became a Clarkson disciple and even transferred down to Southern California in high school to play at Oaks Christian, Jimmy Clausen’s alma mater.

  Asked to size up the ability of the younger Montana for an ESPN.com story about the famous sons on the Oaks football team in 2009—Joe Montana’s son, Wayne Gretzky’s son, and actor Will Smith’s son—Clarkson replied, “How good is he? He’s Joe. He’s Joe with a stronger arm.” Nick Montana also ended up bouncing around in college, beginning his career at Washington before he, too, transferred to Mount San Antonio Junior College and then resurfaced at Tulane.

  The run of Jimmy Clausen stories in the media also caught the eye of a wealthy commercial developer and contractor in Delaware, who kept calling to ask Clarkson to train his nine-year-old son, David Sills V. Clarkson says he was initially reluctant, because he’d never worked with anyone quite that young, but he eventually relented, because the “experiment” of seeing how much the kid could retain intrigued him.

  Even though Clarkson and his new protégé lived three thousand miles apart, they met regularly, usually for one weekend a month, weekly in football season. The coach often was flown back east, but sometimes the Sillses trekked to California to visit Clarkson. Other times, they connected at various places in between, depending on wherever Clarkson was conducting a clinic. By the time Sills V was an eighth-grader, his dad estimated he’d already spent around
$100,000 on Clarkson.

  Soon, Clarkson was gushing about his “Next Big Deal.” One of the people who listened was then-USC head coach Lane Kiffin. Clarkson and Kiffin were chatting over the phone about recruiting, and the “dream maker” told the Trojan coach that he had a thirteen-year-old kid who was going to be better than Jimmy Clausen and Matt Barkley, USC’s starter at the time. Before saying good-bye, Clarkson directed Kiffin to a YouTube video.

  Curious, Kiffin called Clarkson back after watching the clip to find out more about Sills. Clarkson explained that the boy had been training with him for three and a half years. A few hours later, Kiffin was on the phone with the kid and his parents, offering a scholarship that wouldn’t become a reality for another five years. None of these scholarship commitments are binding until the player puts his signature on a National Letter of Intent on Signing Day, which comes on the first Wednesday in February of his senior year of high school. Regardless of all that, the story of Kiffin offering a scholarship to a thirteen-year-old seventh-grader became national news, and Steve Clarkson and his Dreammaker brand swelled even bigger.

  4.

  DQ

  Trent Dilfer cringed as he started to discuss the five-star quarterback he’d let his staff talk him into inviting to the 2012 Elite 11 in his second season running the event. Dilfer lamented that he wasn’t at the Elite 11 regional where the QB had worked out. Instead, he was attending one of his daughter’s volleyball matches.

  “The kid was the recruiting guys’ guy,” Dilfer said, referencing a prospect who gets so hyped by the online recruiting analysts so early that the kid practically gets anointed, which often skews his self-worth and breeds a sense of entitlement. This dynamic had only become thornier as the social-media world had grown. Five years ago, thousands of fans weren’t flocking to some seventeen-year-old’s Twitter feed, fawning and telling him how much their school needed him. It was bad enough that high schoolers had become mindful of their status being measured in recruiting stars; now they could quantify it in a different metric: followers.