Joe Kapp

Joseph Robert Garcia Kapp (March 19, 1938 – May 8, 2023) was an American football player, coach, and executive. He played college football as a quarterback for the California Golden Bears. Kapp played professionally in the Canadian Football League (CFL) with the Calgary Stampeders and the BC Lions and then in the National Football League (NFL) with the Minnesota Vikings and the Boston Patriots; with the Vikings, he led them to victory in the 1969 NFL Championship Game, the only league championship in team history. Kapp returned to his alma mater as head coach of the Golden Bears from 1982 to 1986. He was the general manager and president of the BC Lions in 1990. Kapp is a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, the BC Sports Hall of Fame, the BC Lions Wall of Fame, the College Football Hall of Fame, and the University of California Athletic Hall of Fame. Kapp's #22 jersey is one of eight numbers retired by the Lions. In November 2006, Kapp was voted to the Honour Roll of the CFL's top 50 players of the league's modern era by Canadian sports network TSN. Sports Illustrated once called him "The Toughest Chicano". Kapp is the only player to play quarterback in the Super Bowl, Rose Bowl, and the Grey Cup. Early years Born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Kapp's mother Florence García was of Mexican-American heritage, his father of German descent. He was raised in California, in the San Fernando Valley and Salinas, where he played quarterback for Hart High School in Newhall, now a part of Santa Clarita. Kapp played college football at the University of California, Berkeley, where he led the California Golden Bears to a Pacific Coast Conference championship in 1958 and the Rose Bowl, where they lost to Iowa. This remains California's most recent Rose Bowl appearance. Kapp was named an All-American, and was also awarded the W. J. Voit Memorial Trophy in 1958 as the outstanding football player on the Pacific Coast. A two-sport athlete and fraternity member of Kappa Alpha Order in college, he also played on the basketball team and was a member of the 1956–57 and 1957–58 squads that won the Pacific Coast Conference championships. He earned a bachelor's degree in physical education from the university in 1959. Until 2021, Kapp held the UC Berkeley record for most rushing yards by a quarterback. This was broken by Chase Garbers.