Bobby Beathard, Quarterback at Cal Poly in the Late 1950s, Dies
2/1/2023 3:03:00 PM | Football
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SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. -- Bobby Beathard, Cal Poly's quarterback in the late 1950s who went on to a career of nearly four decades as a National Football League scout and executive, has died at the age of 86.
He died Monday from complications from Alzheimer's disease at his home in Franklin, Tennessee, his son Casey told The Washington Post.
A generous contributor to both academic and athletic missions at the university, Beathard was inducted into the Cal Poly Athletics Hall of Fame in 1988.
Beathard threw for 1,748 yards, leading the Cal Poly football team to 25 wins in 30 career games. After graduating from Cal Poly in 1959, he went on to have a long career as a personnel administrator in the NFL, serving stints with the Kansas City Chiefs (1966-67), Atlanta Falcons (1968-1971), Miami Dolphins (1972-77), Washington Redskins (1978-88) and San Diego Chargers (1990-99).
Bobby Beathard taking a snap
at Cal Poly in the late 1950s.
Beathard helped lead his teams to a total of seven Super Bowl appearances and won four of them. In his first two seasons with the Miami Dolphins, the team won Super Bowl VII and VIII in which Beathard was a director of player personnel. As a general manager, he led the Washington Redskins to a Super Bowl XVII victory and did it again in Super Bowl XXII.
He also took the San Diego Chargers to their only Super Bowl appearance in franchise history in 1994. In total, Beathard won 10 division titles on top of his four Super Bowl rings and was responsible for drafting Hall of Famers Junior Seau, Art Monk, Russ Grimm and Darrell Green.
A 2018 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee as a contributor, Beathard's greatest success occurred in Washington, where he served as general manager from 1978 to 1988. Beathard hired coach Joe Gibbs in 1981 and drafted Hall of Famers Art Monk, Russ Grimm and Darrell Green. Washington won the Super Bowl in 1982 and 1987.
Bobby Beathard (15) scrambles for yardage at Mustang Stadium.
After leaving Washington, Beathard served as general manager for the Chargers from 1990 to 1999. In his third season as general manager, the Chargers won their first division title since 1981. They made the franchise's only Super Bowl appearance during the 1994 season, losing to the San Francisco 49ers.
"Bobby was one of the best judges of football talent in NFL history. For most, that alone would be enough. For Bobby Beathard, it doesn't nearly do the man justice," Chargers owner Dean Spanos said in a statement. "Bobby was who we all aspire to be -- a friendly, caring, giving, thoughtful human being who brought people from all walks of life together.
"He was the best GM in football, but he was also the guy sitting on his surfboard in the ocean that you caught waves with, jogged trails alongside and chatted up in the check-out line of the local market," Spanos added. "He was the guy you felt like you'd known your entire life, even if it wasn't but for five minutes at the gas station. He was just a regular guy who happened to be anything but.
"Bobby was, in fact, exceptional. He was one-of-a-kind. And he will be incredibly missed. On behalf of my family and the Chargers organization, we want to extend our deepest condolences to his wife, Christine, and the entire Beathard family on the loss of one of the best to ever do it, be it football or life."
Beathard retired from football in 2000, and he is a member of the Ring of Fame for both the Commanders and Chargers.
Beathard was the grandfather of quarterback C.J. Beathard, who entered the NFL with the 49ers in 2017 and played for the Jacksonville Jaguars last season. Former Cal Poly running back Gary Davis was scouted and signed by Beathard with the Dolphins.
Beathard did not play organized football until his sophomore year at El Segundo High School. By the middle of that first high school season, he was the starting single-wing tailback. He accepted a football scholarship from Louisiana State.
Homesick and missing California, he returned to the Golden State, enrolled at El Camino Junior College for a year and went on to play football at Cal Poly, first as a reserve running back in 1956, then as the starting quarterback and defensive back in 1957 and 1958. Cal Poly had back-to-back 9-1 seasons those two years, and Beathard, according to his coach, Roy Hughes, was the major reason why.
"He was a very fine quarterback who could also run with the football," Hughes told the Washington Post. "But he also was a great defensive back. That was the day of one-platoon football, and Bobby really could do everything. We only had 35 guys on the squad.
"John Madden was on his team as a lineman. We had another quarterback, Tommy Klosterman, the brother of the Rams' general manager, and we used him more in passing situations. But Bobby was the starter. He was a great kid, a very loyal kid. He'd do anything we asked him to do. He lived and breathed the game."
In 1981, Madden recalled Beathard as "one of those real tough hard-nosed guys. He was little, but he really could throw the football. A lot of guts -- kind of a Billy Kilmer-type."
Beathard was not drafted by the National Football League when he graduated in 1959, instead signing with the Redskins as a free agent. He competed for a position with Eddie LeBaron, Ralph Guglielmi and Eagle Day. He did manage to hook on with the Los Angeles Chargers of the American Football League as a defensive back in 1961, but he was released at the end of the pre-season. "He was just too damned small to play quarterback," Madden said. "But if he'd had a real good shot, I bet he'd have made it."
Beathard began selling insurance, then chemical supplies. He started an airplane paint-stripping business with a friend, and continued to play semi-pro football until he signed on as a part-time scout with the Kansas City Chiefs in the mnid-1960s, working the western states. He stayed with them for three years and also spent one three-month period as an aide to Al Davis, then the commissioner of the AFL.
The rest is history.
Kurt Beathard, another of Beathard's sons, played on the Cal Poly football team as a freshman in the early 1980s. Most recently, he was an assistant coach at Illinois State from 2018-20.
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