Sept. 22, 2005

The mid 1970s were a time of flux for the Illinois football program. After going 6-4-1 in 1974, the Illini had two back-to-back 5-6 seasons, which signaled the end of Coach Bob Blackman's tenure. Cecil Coleman hired Michigan assistant Gary Moeller to take over the reins in 1977, and hopes were high that the Illinois football program was ready for a turnaround. That didn't happen, however, until the Mike White era of the '80s.

QUARTERBACK KURT STEGER played for the Illini through parts of the Blackman and Moeller tenures. He came to Illinois in the fall of 1974 after a three-sport career at Lake Park High School. Steger finished his UI career with 2,733 passing yards (at the time just 17 yards short of the Illinois passing record) and 18 touchdowns.

Jared Gelfond

JG: Joining me right now is an Illinois quarterback from 1975-1977--the old #11--and that's Kurt Steger. How are you doing, Kurt?

KS: Good. What's going on out there in Champaign?

JG: The Illini are off to a good start. But before we go in-depth on your Illinois football career, we will start off in high school where you played three sports at Lake Park High School. Was football always your first love?

KS: You know, that's a hard question. I think it became my first love after my brother got hurt---my second oldest brother got hurt playing football when he broke his neck in 1968.

I think that he missed a lot from that so I think as time grew and time went by it did become my favorite sport, but early on I really enjoyed playing basketball a lot.

JG: Who was involved in your football recruitment, and when did you first really realize you were going to play football at the Division I level?

KS: I actually was recruited by three Big Ten schools. One was obviously Illinois, one was Northwestern and Indiana was the third. Also one of the trips I made during my senior year is I went down to the University of Miami, and that would have been a two sport deal with baseball and football.

And my final trip was to the University of New Mexico because they were recruiting me pretty heavy. It was exciting for me to think about playing at the Division I level and I finally realized that if I am going to play against the best, why not play the best in the Big Ten.

JG: Who was the Illini assistant coach that was recruiting you?

KS: Carl Meyer.

JG: Why did you choose to attend Illinois?

KS: I believed it was far enough away to be away from home, but close enough that my folks could come and watch. Our family was very, very close and really with the football scenario with my brother---my oldest brother played, and my mom and dad watched him. My twin brother and I played, so I didn't want to go too far away to play college football.

They actually came to every home game I played in.

JG: 1974 was your freshman year at the University, and you didn't get that much time on the field that year. When you look back at that season and the adjustment that you had from high school to college, what do you remember overall about that winning season?

KS: One of the things that happened to me was that the third string quarterback, Mike McCray, had a back problem and had to have surgery, so that put me in the third spot. So I started to travel, and I practiced with the varsity and stuff. We were actually playing Ohio State late in the season...

JG: That was a top-ranked Ohio State team.

KS: Exactly. We got smacked in the first half, so we get into the locker room at halftime and Coach Blackman says to me, `Get ready, because you are going to play in the second half.'

I thought, `Great, I am 18 years old and I am playing in a stadium with 99,000 people. Oh, my gosh.' In essence, I grew from that experience, and one of the first things I remembered was getting into the huddle.

It felt like I was in the land of the giants and these guys were just towering over me. The guys helped me through it, I survived and actually had a decent finish to that game. The day after that, I played in the junior varsity game and a guy hit me from the blindside and fell on my ankle. I had a high ankle sprain and didn't play the rest of the year.

JG: The first loss you guys had that year was to a California team which was ironically coached by Mike White, who would later come on to coach at Illinois, but the game I wanted to talk to you about was the Golden Anniversary game at Memorial Stadium--a game against Michigan State (a21-21 tie Oct. 19, 1974). Do you remember Red Grange's pre-game speech to you guys in the locker room?

KS: I do, and he was such a legend. It was an honor to hear him speak in front of us, and to be a part of that was incredible. He was a great man of great stature--a part of a great history. It was pretty incredible to hear him speak.

JG: The other game I wanted to bring you to was against Michigan, a signature game (a 14-6 loss Nov. 9, 1974,) and a game that Illinois probably should have won as Jeff Hollenbach hit Joe Smalzer in the end zone for a catch that wasn't ruled a catch. Any memories from that game?

KS: You hit the nail on the head right there. The guy is falling back out of the end zone, and the next day, when we were watching films, we couldn't believe it because we had beat that team that day. He caught the ball, got his feet in and they ruled it wasn't a catch. But you look at replay after replay after replay, and it's right there--it's a touchdown.

We gave Michigan some games and we found out that Michigan isn't invincible. I think that's the way we attacked it, but when you go up to Ann Arbor and play, that's a hard place to win. We always had the game pretty close when they came to Champaign.

JG: Was there one player who took you under his win in that first year and talk about your relationship with the two quarterbacks ahead of you in Jeff Hollenbach and Jim Kopatz?

KS: Actually, Jim Kopatz and I had a great relationship. Jim was a baseball player like I was---a great athlete, and we seemed to hit it off. Jeff was more of kind of a bookworm type guy and he hit the books hard and didn't socialize as much.

My relationship with Jim was a lot better than it was with Jeff, but Jeff was in his senior year and I was still 18, so you can't expect to have a great relationship there.

JG: What about the battle you and Jim had in the pre-season heading into the 1975 football season?

KS: I really don't think there was a battle. Jim was the experienced quarterback and he was the older of the two of us. I guess as it turned out our first game was against Iowa (a 27-12 win in Iowa City Sept. 13, 1975) and we struggled in the first half.

I got the call in the second half and we actually came back from a deficit and we got the victory. Jimmy and I had a relationship where it didn't matter who played. We were both going to give it 110 percent and we both knew the offense tremendously.

JG: You talked about that Iowa game, which was a 27-12 victory and the next week you played a very good Missouri team--which was ranked fifth in the country--and you guys had a 20-7 lead and had real good chance to start off that season 2-0. But Missouri went on to run off 23 straight points. What about your memories of that disappointing loss (a 30-20 loss at Memorial Stadium Sept. 20,, 1975)?

KS: First of all, I had a 53-yard touchdown run on an option play that day. I remember coming around left end and I pulled the ball in from the belly option, and when I looked up everybody was going for the pitch guy.

I went right down the hash mark for a touchdown, but one of the things I do remember about that game is that in the second half I couldn't figure out what happened. We didn't score a point in the second half and I don't know. I guess they toughened up and took a defensive hit on us in the second half. It was a great game, I remember it was televised but it was also a very disappointing loss.

JG: You guys were 4-3 and only had to win two games with four to go to have a winning season. You lost a tough game to Wisconsin, and then you played the two big ones, Ohio State and Michigan, before finishing the season with a win over Northwestern to go 5-6. When you finished 1975, what was the general feeling for you heading into 1976?

KS: I am an optimist. I looked at the people that we had there, and we lost some good people in 1975, but we had some good people coming back. I felt like we could do some good things in 1976.

JG: In the 1976 season, you took the ball for the entire season, and in fact it would be your only season where you were the starter for all of the games. You had an opening-game win against Iowa, and then you went to play Missouri, which was No. 6 in the country, and you guys dominated them, 31-6. Take us back to that big win.

KS: We had a great plan--we saw some things on their film that we could attack and we certainly attacked them. We threw the ball well and it worked. I guess that is a good checkmark for Coach Blackman, who was pretty good about breaking down a team on film. We played real well and took it to them.

JG: After the 2-0 start you lost three straight to Baylor, Texas A&M, Minnesota, and then a win over Purdue but the team finished with a 5-6 record. How difficult was it to be right under that .500 hump in 1975 and 1976?

KS: The frustration of trying to get over that hump was tremendous. We all wanted to get into the above .500 club and do the 8-3 or even 7-4 thing and to be unable to accomplish that was very, very frustrating.

Steger with Coach Gary Moeller

JG: What were your thoughts and memories of that transition period between Coach Blackman and Coach Moeller?

KS: The one thing, when I look back is in my last year at Illinois and Coach Moeller's first year, it was his best year at Illinois. One of the first thing he said to me is, `We are going to put an offense together with the people that we have,' which is what we did in the spring. We did that, and then he introduced the option the first double sessions in the summer. He said, `We are running Michigan's offense,' and looking back, that was crazy.

JG: So in the spring you were throwing the ball a little bit?

KS: We were throwing the ball and we had an offense geared towards the people that we had playing.

JG: You and Rickie Mitchem were named captains of that 1977 team. Talk about that honor.

KS: It was an honor to be named captain and it was an honor because those team captains were chosen by the players. That's what made it such a great honor, and it shows the respect that they had not only for us but we had for them.

JG: One interesting thing from the Moeller years is that he brought over a pretty good young staff with guys like Joe Novak (now head coach at Northern Illinois University), Norm Parker (now defensive coordinator at Iowa), Bob Sutton (now linebackers coach with the New York Jets) and Glen Mason (now head coach at Minnesota).

KS: It was an impressive group of guys, and Joe Novak is doing great up at Northern. I believe when he was there with us he was coaching the line, but my hat's off to him with his success. Those are some remarkable guys who came up through the ranks, served their time and became very successful.

JG: Even thought it wasn't a great year, you also had some talented players and some great teammates on that squad. Scott Studwell (linebacker: 1973, 1975-1976), for example.

KS: Oh wow, I mean a 280-pound defensive tackle, who busted me up all the time in practice. He ends up having a pretty good career as a middle linebacker at Illinois and has a great professional career. He built his body to the point where he had no body fat and was just such a great individual. We had some great times together partying and some great times as well on the field.

JG: The next guy I want to talk to you about is one of the great linebackers in Illinois history and that is John Sullivan (1974, 1976-1978).

KS: John is another great human being, and it was a pleasure to play football with him. He had great strength, a great mind and I thought he would go a little further in the NFL than he did. What a great football player he was at Illinois.

JG: Your running back in a few of those years under Blackman and Moeller was James Coleman (tailback: 1976-1977).

KS: I don't even know what James is doing nowadays, but I miss that guy. We had a great relationship also, and it was different, because James was always in the backfield and he was the guy I was giving the ball to. He and I played in the Challenge Bowl together out in Seattle after the season, and he was a good running back in his time in Champaign.

JG: Another guy on the defense who is living in Atlanta today and doing real well is Derwin Tucker (defensive back: 1975-1978).

KS: You talk about a great athlete. Derwin could play a lot of sports and had the athletic ability to be good in all of them. Playing with those guys was just a tremendous experience for me. I will never forget them.

One guy I have to mention is Joe Smalzer (tight end: 1974-1975,) and I can never forget my experience with Joe. All of the crossing patterns across the middle, the rollouts and always hitting Joe across the middle. I was living with Joe at that house and he was such a mellow guy and he had some tryouts in the NFL, but he was a great guy and also a good guy to play football with.

Larry Schultz (1974-76) was our fullback; he was a back-up to Steve Greene until Steve graduated. He was a short sparkplug guy and another guy that it was a pleasure to play with.

JG: A guy who was your fellow captain in 1977--Rickie Mitchem (1975-1977).

KS: Rickie is a very, very jovial and personable guy and he is going to succeed in whatever he does. I am just sad that his career at Illinois sort of finished like mine did, because he was a very intelligent ball player, a very physical ball player and a guy who could have gone further. The guy had got a smile from ear-to-ear and was rarely in a bad mood.

JG: What about Mike Sherrod (tight end: 1978-1980)?

KS: He was a great tight end (laughing); these are some names I haven't heard in a while. Mike was a guy you knew if you threw the ball to, he was going to catch it, and you also knew Mike was going to be funny. He was such a character.

JG: Another guy you threw the ball to all the time in Eric Rouse (flanker: 1976-78).

KS: I miss Eric, too, and he was such a vibrant guy. He had great speed and he was exciting to watch on the playing field. He could run great routes, and it was a pleasure to throw the football to him. In that Missouri game we were talking about, he caught some big passes in that game.

I remember the touchdown he caught---I am laying flat on my back, I threw the ball out there and I thought I had thrown it up for grabs and it was going to be intercepted. He turned just in time and the ball was right there and he ran it in for a touchdown.

JG: What about some of the guys who blocked for you on that offensive line?

KS: Well, the first guy who comes up and it's probably because he was an old roommate of mine and I am probably biased but that's Gary Jurczyk (guard: 1975-77). What a great person and he is very quiet, very reserved. He had pipes on him, though, and was a good strong guy and a very good offensive lineman. He was a quiet comedian, and I think he ended up playing for the Broncos for a couple of years.

Another roommate of mine that I have to say something about and that is Brad Childress. He became a grad assistant and it was Brad, Gary Jurcyzk, myself, and Jim Kogut (defensive tackle: 1976-77) rooming together. Brad and I have lost touch, but he has a great family and has been really successful with the Eagles.

JG: What about what you are doing today?

KS: I work with Kurt StegerKS, a distribution center right now--strictly wholesale and my little business does approximately six million dollars a year and there are like seven people that work there, so it's a pretty good deal that we have going.

We have seven locations nationwide and we are just getting ready to break out distribution centers into call centers and we are combining them. I will be in charge of about nine states at the beginning of the year so things are going pretty well.

JG: Hopefully we will see you back in Champaign for a game soon.

KS: I'd love that, and I got a guy here in town that keeps giving me static about not going. He is an avid alum and he goes down there every year for every game. I can never go, because of some family obligations, but I will get down there.