Remembering Joe Kapp: Firebrand Cal coach would ‘punch you in the face’ for Golden Bears

Joe Kapp loved to talk about the joys of football, of “being in the arena” where men showcased their courage, their grit, their resolve.

“The arena,” Kapp said so often, “is the greatest place on earth.”

Kapp was the prideful California Golden Bear who quarterbacked the Berkeley school to its last Rose Bowl in 1959, who recruited top Sacramento-area high school football players during his five-year Cal coaching stint in the 1980s, who coached the ill-fated Sacramento Attack Arena Football League team more than 30 years ago, and who will live on in memory for everyone he touched.

Kapp died Monday at the age of 85 following a 15-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease, his family said in a statement.

Kapp was in his element in the arena. He was regarded as a great teammate by day and, often, a brawler by night. He sported a gnarly scar on his chin from a fight he had with a Minnesota Vikings teammate in the late 1960s, each man trying to take blame for a loss. Kapp insisted on taking the fall and fought for that honor. Kapp reveled in that story, sharing it with Cal players while running his finger across that scar.

Kapp was defined by his bombast and leadership, and he prided himself for being the very definition of toughness. He grew up in Salinas as a Cal fan, then graduated from Hart High School in Los Angeles County, where he was a basketball and football star. He was good enough to get recruited by Cal to play basketball for famed coach Pete Newell and football for equally famed Pappy Waldorf.

Kapp’s arena included that long-ago Rose Bowl, of reaching the Grey Cup in the Canadian Football League and landing in the Super Bowl, thus becoming the only man to quarterback a program to all three destinations. Kapp is in the College Football Hall of Fame, the Cal Athletic Hall of Fame, the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame and the Canadian Football Hall of Fame — and anyone’s tough-guy Hall of Fame.

Taking over at Cal

Kapp was handed the reins of the floundering Cal football program in 1982, never mind that he never coached a down of football at any level. But what Kapp lacked in game strategy, he made up for with enthusiasm. He won people over with his booming cheer and optimism, and he’d take on anyone who doubted his love and loyalty for his beloved Bears of Berkeley.

Kapp’s first Cal season as coach ended with the wildest play in the history of college football, if not all of football, the five-lateral miracle play to beat Stanford, John Elway and the Cardinal band on the final play, 25-20.

Cal went 7-4 that season, and Kapp recruited Sacramento hard to keep the momentum rolling. Kapp landed national recruits such as running back/receiver Vince Delgado of Christian Brothers High, tailback Marc Hicks of Davis, receiver Rob Bimson of El Camino and quarterback Troy Taylor of Cordova.

‘He’s why I went to Cal’

Taylor started four years at quarterback for Cal, setting scores of records, including in Kapp’s final campaign. The former Sacramento State coach now heading the Stanford Cardinal, Taylor on Tuesday recalled the influence of Kapp.

“He’s why I went to Cal,” Taylor said by phone. “I remember him coming into my living room to recruit me. Every coach tells you how great you are when they recruit you, and he asked, ‘Troy, what are you looking for at Cal?’ Well, I want to go to the Rose Bowl. He loved that. Then it went south. I gave secondary goals, like my desire to pass for a lot of yards and to make it to the NFL. His facial expressions changed: ‘Stop right there! Don’t talk about that! Only thing we want to talk about is winning!’”

Taylor added: “I connected with Kapp. He wore his emotions on his sleeve. He was all about Cal. No one personified Cal, a lover of football, a lover of the university like Kapp. And like Kapp, I love football and love competing, so we fit. And I always appreciate that Kapp believed in me.”

So much so that Kapp in 1986 turned the team over to Taylor, a true freshman, and instructed him to lead the charge, to be free and to be himself. Late in the season, Taylor had his jaw broken, the result of a forearm smash to the face mask, in a game at USC (Taylor reminds that he completed the 42-yard pass, by the way). Taylor recalled how he was looking for teeth in the turf and didn’t want to disappoint his coach by looking rattled or broken.

“Kapp loved that, loved how tough I was, the broken jaw, all of that,” Taylor said with a laugh. “My full name is Troy Scott Taylor, and Kapp would call me Tough S--- Taylor.”

Taylor said when he woke up from jaw surgery, Kapp was by his hospital bedside.

“He was humming the Cal fight song,” Taylor said. “I don’t think he knew the words, but he definitely had the tune. That was Kapp.”

‘I’ll punch you in the face’

Taylor said in his short time with Kapp, he experienced and heard a lot of stories of the firebrand coach. One of them included another Sacramento prep star in McClatchy’s Brian Bedford, who played quarterback and receiver at Cal. Taylor said Bedford told him when they were Cal teammates that he saw Kapp call USC coach Ted Tollner days before the teams met and say: “I’ve been watching the tape from last year’s game. Your offensive linemen held us on every play. The first time that happens on Saturday, I’ll walk across the field and punch you in the face.”

Kapp hung up before Tollner could respond.

Another story: In a tight game at Oregon, Kapp rallied the troops by saying at the half, “Men, bears don’t lose to ducks.” The Bears beat the Ducks that day.

Kapp also made referred to Cal’s mascot following the five-lateral game in 1982, saying, “The bear does not quit. The bear will not die.”

That slogan is etched into a plaque near Cal’s Memorial Stadium.

Kapp’s final game as Cal’s coach was also a Big Game stunner over Stanford, capping the 1986 season. Taylor, out with the broken jaw, which was wired shut, sat in the press box with coaches. Taylor told one of them that a reverse would work and the coaches used it. Cal won the game on a reverse by Michael Ford.

An emotional Kapp, already told he would not return as coach, was carried off the field by his players. Kapp went 20-34-1 as Cal’s coach, but he left the arena a hero.

“The postgame scene was wild, chaos, everybody celebrating,” Taylor recalled. “I think that’s when he promised never to drink tequila again until Cal reached the Rose Bowl. Not sure he lived up to that, but that was great. His fight and determination, to not be outworked, that was Kapp. Football was his life. He was a blue collar kid who accomplished so much with sheer will.”

Cursing Burt Reynolds at UCLA

Bill Laveroni was Kapp’s recruiting coordinator at Cal, and Laveroni recruited Sacramento hard.

He told The Bee on Tuesday: “The first thing I would say was his fierce love for Cal, even to the point of how he talked about the history of the university and how he couldn’t understand why a recruit from California would even think of going somewhere else. As his personal history would reflect, he was a tremendous competitor. In fact, there were days in the office that we would have staff basketball games, which were mandatory. I had the task of guarding Joe. He gave no mercy. That was the way he felt about Cal. You were always a Bear or you were the enemy.”

Laveroni added this story: “We were playing UCLA in the Rose Bowl, and after we finished warmups, we were jogging off the field. On the UCLA sideline was Burt Reynolds, whom Kapp worked with in the movie, ‘The Longest Yard.’ Burt yelled hello to Joe, but Joe raised his hand and said a curse word at him and kept going to the locker room. We asked him why he did that and Kapp said Burt Reynolds was on the enemy’s sideline, so he was the enemy.”

Kapp sometimes looked to the media as the enemy, especially if anyone doubted his methods. He once unzipped his fly after a loss at Washington when he was asked why things went south. That ended the interview, and Cal fans seized on that at the next home game, chanting, “Win one for the Zipper!”

Kapp’s Sac Attack

Kapp’s last go as a coach was in Sacramento, where he coached the Sacramento Attack of the Arena Football League in 1992. The team lasted one season.

In a 1992 column in The Bee, R.E. Graswich recalled a chat he had with Kapp while covering Cal football years earlier, and he questioned why a player with a concussion remained in the game.

“Have you ever had your bell rung in the arena?” Kapp fired back at Graswich. “Have you ever had the stuffing knocked out of you in the arena? Maybe I should show you what it feels like. The man stayed in the arena with a concussion because he needed to.”

Kapp changed his tune years later. He told the media in 2016 that he was dealing with memory loss and feared he was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease from the rigors of football collisions.

Kapp never lost his joyous spirit, his son J.J. Kapp wrote, saying, “In Joe’s world, everyone was family, and every day was a fiesta. To the very end he was entertaining his caregivers with rousing daily versions of ‘You Are My Sunshine.’”