Joe Kapp

Kapp on Sports Illustrated Cover

Joseph Robert Kapp was an American football quarterback. Kapp played College football for the Cal-Berkeley, where, in 1958, he led the team to a Pacific Coast Championship and its last appearance in the 1959 Rose Bowl. He was named an All American that year. He also played basketball for Cal and was on the 1956-1957 and 1957-1958 teams that won the Pacific Coast Championship and went to the 1958 NCAA tournament. He earned a B.A. degree in Physical Education from UC Berkeley in 1960.

In 1959 Kapp joined the Calgary Stampeders of the CFL. In 1961 the British Columbia Lions, the CFL's newest franchise, traded 5 players for Kapp. The move quickly paid off for the Lions when Kapp led the team to a Grey Cup appearance in 1963 before leading the Lions to their first Grey Cup victory in 1964. However, the Lions proved unable to defend their championship and, before the 1967 season, the team traded Kapp to the Minnesota Vikings of the NFL for Jim Young.

In 1968, Kapp led the Minnesota Vikings to their first ever playoff game as a team against the Baltimore Colts. On September 28, 1969 in a game against the Baltimore Colts he threw for 7 touchdown passes which still stands as the all-time record today with 3 other players. That same year he led the Vikings to a 12-2 record and a berth in Super Bowl IV after defeating the Cleveland Browns 27-7 in the last NFL Championship game ever played. That year Joe coined the phrase "40 for 60" meaning 40 players going all out for 60 minutes. However, he was unable to lead the team to victory in the Super Bowl, as the Vikings lost 23-7 to the Kansas City Chiefs. The following year the NFL and AFL merged and the NFL Championship game was no more after 50 years of NFL competition.

A contract dispute forced Kapp to be traded to the Boston Patriots in 1970 where he was the highest paid player in the league. Unfortunately, he played very poorly that season, leading the Patriots to the league's worst record, and one year later he retired from pro football.

On July 20, 1970, Sports Illustrated dubbed Joe Kapp "The Toughest Chicano" on the cover of its weekly magazine. In 1982 after a short acting career in such movies as the Longest Yard, Two Minute Warning and Semi Tough, Joe was hired as the head football coach at his alma mater, The University of California, Berkeley. In his first year as head coach, he was voted the Pac 10 Coach of the year.

Kapp was the coach who called the Play, which is one of the most famous moments in the history of U.S. college football. Down by one point and about to receive a kickoff with four seconds remaining in the Big Game between Cal and its arch rival Stanford, Joe told his players to keep the ball in play by lateraling it Rugby-style while running towards the goalline. Cal made five laterals. In the meantime, Stanford players and the Stanford Band thinking that they had won the game ran on to the field in celebration. When Kevin Moen, the last Cal player to receive the ball evaded Stanford players and band members and made it into the endzone, he jumped up to celebrate and landed on a Stanford trombone player.

In an effort to recapture their past glory the British Columbia Lions hired Kapp as the team's new general-manager in 1990. Kapp's tenure was marked by his tendency to recruit ex-NFL players such as Mark Gastineau whose best before date had already expired. Kapp was fired 11 games into the Lions schedule, his most valuable legacy the signing of quarterback Doug Flutie who would star in the CFL over the next decade.

Today, Kapp lives in California and makes himself available as a guest speaker. He owns Kapp's Pizza Bar & Grill in Mountain View, California.

Kapp is a member of the University of California Athletic Hall of Fame and the Canadian Football League Hall of Fame.