Glory, Past and Present : A Tale of Two Quarterbacks, Jeff Van Raaphorst and Jake Plummer

Before there was “Jake the Snake” at Arizona State there was “Van the Man.”

Before that, it was Frank “Fill in the Blank” Kush.

This, essentially, is the history of Arizona State football.

Three men. Three eras. Three defining moments.

Kush, who coached 22 seasons, from 1958 to 1979, put the school on the map, on the hot seat after allegedly slapping punter Kevin Rutledge, then on NCAA probation.

Kush’s crowning moment was the 1975 Fiesta Bowl, when he capped a 12-0 season and No. 2 national ranking with a 17-14 victory over Nebraska at Sun Devil Stadium.

Moment No. 2 belongs to Jeff Van Raaphorst, the quarterback who led Arizona State to its first Rose Bowl appearance, Jan. 1, 1987, a 22-15 victory over Michigan. Van Raaphorst’s most-valuable-player performance raised him to near sainthood.

And now this year, Moment No. 3, courtesy of quarterback Jake Plummer. This may actually turn out to be a two-parter, if Plummer can lead Arizona State to 12-0 finish and possible national title with a Rose Bowl victory over Ohio State.

Plummer’s legacy was rubber-stamped Sept. 21 in Tempe, when he directed a 19-0 victory over No. 1 Nebraska, snapping the Cornhuskers’ 26-game winning streak.

“It wasn’t magical because we didn’t have to perform magic to beat them,” Plummer says of the victory. “We just outplayed them.”

Because great moments in Arizona State football history are so disparate and distinct, the need to compare is apparently more enticing.

When Van Raaphorst was leading his team’s 10-1-1 run in 1986, he remembers growing tired of the comparison’s to Kush’s ’75 team.

Van Raaphorst could only break free after leading the team to the Rose Bowl victory.

Now it’s Plummer’s turn. So,is this year’s Arizona State team better than the ’86 squad that produced such NFL talent as Dan Saleaumua, Eric Allen, Aaron Cox, Bruce Hill, Shawn Patterson, Randall McDaniel, Skip McClendon and Danny Villa?

“If I’m [Plummer], I’ve got to be absolutely sick of it,” Van Raaphorst says. “You don’t want to be compared. Jake’s probably one of the best quarterbacks to ever come out of ASU. This team is, if not the best, one of the best ever to play at ASU. And here they are, getting compared. They’ll get their place, and rightfully so.”

That said, Van Raaphorst isn’t yet conceding that this year’s Arizona State team is better.

“They haven’t won yet,” he says of the Rose Bowl. “But I hope they do.”

Plummer, in fact, is tired of serving as class historian.

“I say it in a kind manner, and in a good way, but my goal this year was to erase the past,” Plummer says. “Forget about the ’87 team. Forget about all that stuff, Kush and all that. This is the new ASU. This is it. This is ’97. We’re going to start the tradition from here on. And I’m just glad I’m a senior and have been able to enjoy part of this.”

Comparisons to the ’86 season are inevitable. For one, Van Raaphorst is still a BMOC, a fixture in the community and game analyst on the Sun Devils’ radio broadcasts.

Comparisons are inevitable because, well, there are comparisons.

Both the ’86 squad and this year’s team clinched the Rose Bowl by beating California. Both were ranked in the top five nationally. Both were unbeaten before the Arizona game.

The difference?

Van Raaphorst’s team slipped twice.

In the third game, he threw five interceptions against Washington State in what ended up a 21-21 tie. The Sun Devils scored late to tie the game and then chose to kick the extra point instead of going for the win.

It was the safe, conservative call. Ohio State fans know the approach. Arizona State’s coach at the time was John Cooper.

What may ultimately distinguish this year’s team from ’86 was the Arizona game.

A decade ago, the Sun Devils watched their unbeaten season unravel with a 34-17 defeat at Tucson by their archrival.

Van Raaphorst doesn’t alibi for the defeat, but says a few things need to be known.

He says the team had a mental letdown after Miami and Penn State were locked up to play in the Fiesta Bowl for the mythical national title before Arizona State played Arizona.

“We’re sitting here at No. 3 saying, ‘Geez, we have no chance to win the national championship, it doesn’t matter with U of A,’ so we just kind of mentally shifted our focus to the Rose Bowl, and that was real bad on our part,” Van Raaphorst recalls.

“I think that’s the one thing that helped ASU this year, they were chasing the national championship, and they had a lot of incentive to beat U of A. We had it all taken away.”

With the national title in site, Plummer’s team routed Arizona, 56-14.

If Plummer can duplicate Van Raaphorst’s Rose Bowl performance, this Arizona State team can lay claim to being the school’s best.

Kush’s 1975 team? No chance. Not with that schedule: Idaho, New Mexico, Pacific, Texas El Paso.

Van Raaphorst hopes to sit down with Plummer before the Rose Bowl and talk about the media circus he can expect to face.

“I would just tell him not to get caught up in it,” Van Raaphorst says. “Be able to say ‘No.’ You don’t have to do every interview under the sun. There are so many demands on your time, sometimes you can lose focus. It’s supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be a reward. Get focused. Enjoy your friends, because this is the last time those guys are going to play together.”

Van Raaphorst’s Rose Bowl experience could not have been sweeter. He went to Arizona State in part to avenge Ohio State’s snub of his father’s team.

Dick Van Raaphorst was an all-conference kicker on Woody Hayes’ 1961 squad. But the Ohio State faculty, wanting to show that football was not overemphasized at the university, voted against sending the Buckeyes to Pasadena. Minnesota went instead and beat UCLA, 21-3.

Jeff Van Raaphorst was born in Columbus, but grew up in San Diego after his father signed with the Chargers.

He dreamed of attending a Pacific 10 school and beating Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. He had to settle for Michigan.

“Finally getting there was such a relief,” he says.

Van Raaphorst was supposed to have been outclassed in the game by Michigan quarterback Jim Harbaugh, who finished third in the Heisman Trophy balloting behind winner Vinny Testaverde of Miami and runner-up Paul Palmer of Temple.

But after Michigan jumped to an early 15-3 lead, the game was Van Raaphorst’s.

“It was funny,” he recalls. “When we went down 15-3, I was standing on about the 35-yard line, and I looked over to one of the wideouts, I think it was Bruce Hill, and I said, ‘You know what? They won’t score again.’ And he looked at me like I was nuts.”

Michigan didn’t score again. Van Raaphorst’s four-yard scoring pass to Hill just before the half cut the lead to 15-13, then Arizona State took the lead for good early in the third quarter on a one-yard scoring pass to Hill.

Van Raaphorst completed 16 of 30 passes for 193 yards and two touchdowns.

Harbaugh threw three interceptions.

Van Raaphorst is married now, with three kids. He has worked six years for U.S. Surgical, a company that makes surgical instruments. In May, he will graduate from Arizona State with a master’s degree in business administration.

Of all the future NFL players that emerged from the ’86 team, Van Raaphorst was not one of them.

Darryl Rogers, the former Arizona State coach, offered to take Van Raaphorst with the Detroit Lions’ ninth-round pick.

But Van Raaphorst wanted to take his chance as a free agent.

He was cut in Denver and played a couple of strike games for Atlanta in 1987 before a sore arm ended a comeback attempt with Philadelphia in 1988.

Van Raaphorst says being named MVP of that Rose Bowl game still opens doors around Phoenix.

Plummer is knocking at the same door.

“When I leave Arizona State, my legacy will be that I got them back in the Rose Bowl in ‘97,” Plummer says. “That’s it. I’ll be remembered for that. And 20 years from now, when they say, Jake Plummer, it’ll be the Rose Bowl, ’97. I’m going to take a lot of pride in that. That’s why I came here.”