Ryan Leaf Should be on the Mount Rushmore of Montana Sports
Earlier this week, the Montana Mint launched a piece trying to determine who should be on Montana’s Mount Rushmore of Sports. You can read the whole thing here. Below you will find an excerpt on why troubled former quarterback Ryan Leaf should be etched into the Mountain. Don’d forget to vote here.
UNPOPULAR OPINION ALERT: Despite his fall from grace, Ryan Leaf has to be on the Montana Sports Mount Rushmore. Phenomenal college athlete and probably the one Montana athlete everyone knows is from Montana. Random people around the country even know he’s from Great Falls. Does any other Montana athlete have that kind of recognition? No.
But his post-college buffoonery really makes it hard to want to chisel his visage into any Montana mountain. Maybe there’s a good way to spin it, though, by making his monument an ever-looming testament to man’s hubris. He’s like our own Icarus–except the sun he flew too close to was actually a giant orb of Oxy, its ever-present, ineffable pull too great for even our most glorious heroes.
So, I say he makes the cut, but we don’t use some triumphant, Wazzu Cougs pre-Rose Bowl picture Leaf, all bucktoothed and cocksure:
Image via Seattle Times Archives
That doesn’t tell the story, and that’s actually a disservice to how essentially human a story it is. I propose we blast this full moon of broken dreams onto the monument:
Image vie Deadspin
And when we take our little whipper-snappers to gaze up at our stony sports greats, we can tell them there, on the right, that disheveled ball of dough with dead eyes that will inhabit your little dreams for years, was our greatest sports hero. He was a man that had every natural athletic gift you could ask for (and a few you can’t ask for), was within a whisker’s breadth of grabbing the biggest golden ring we have in sports, but gave it all away to get heroically stoned on stolen smack. It’s a pick six of a life, it’s a story I want to tell my kids, and it’s a story we can’t ignore or overlook just because it ends with prison and a strangely swollen face.
To paraphrase Saul Berenson, Leaf almost painted a masterpiece, and not many people can even pretend to get close to that. To do that he needed to walk a knife-edge that very few people even can attempt. The insane self-confidence he needed to attempt it can only break a couple ways—one way lands you in a Montana prison for stealing meds from strangers, and the other turns you into a pathological killer on the field, willing to bend any rule to win (see: Brady, Tom). He famously broke the wrong way, but no one else on our list that could even get to that point.
Ryan Leaf Bio
Ryan Leaf was born and raised in Great Falls. The 6’5” quarterback led his team at CMR High School to a state title in 1992. He went to Washington State University, and as a senior, led his team to the Rose Bowl, where they lost to the Michigan Wolverines. That same year, Leaf was voted the “most outstanding player” in college football by the media and former players. He was a finalist for the Heisman, but he finished third behind Charles Woodson of Michigan and Peyton Manning of Tennessee. Going into the draft, there was a legitimate debate whether the Indianapolis Colts should select Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf with the number one pick overall. Leaf went #2 to the San Diego Chargers. It did not go well: his performance on the field was characterized by interceptions and sloppy play. Off the field he was rude to his teammates and the media. After an injury and being bounced around between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Dallas Cowboys, and the Seattle Seahawks, he chose to retire. This has also not gone well: his life after football has been marred by substance abuse and legal trouble, including spending time in prison in Montana.
Cover image via JukeLeft.com
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