Dan White (born September 14, 1972) is a former
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...
quarterback
The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...
. He was the starting quarterback for the
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory.
T ...
football team from 1993–1995, a span which included the
Wildcats' only
Pac-10
The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its College football, football teams compete in the NCAA D ...
championship to date, as well as a record-setting
Fiesta Bowl
The Fiesta Bowl is an American college football bowl game played annually in the Phoenix metropolitan area. From its beginning in 1971 until 2006, the game was hosted at the Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. Since 2007, the game has been playe ...
victory.
High school
White began his football career at
Point Loma High School
Point Loma High School is a public high school in the San Diego Unified School District in San Diego, California, United States. It is located in the Loma Portal neighborhood of Point Loma. The school serves the neighborhoods of Point Loma and ...
in San Diego, CA, where he was the starting quarterback for a powerhouse team that included gifted wide-receiver
Brett Callan, as well as future
NFL
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major ...
stars
J. J. Stokes
Jerel Jamal Stokes (born October 6, 1972) is a former American football wide receiver. Stokes played in the National Football League (NFL) for nine seasons. He played college football for the UCLA Bruins, and was recognized as a unanimous All- ...
and
La'Roi Glover
La'Roi Damon Glover (; born July 4, 1974) is an American former football defensive tackle who is the defensive line coach for the St. Louis BattleHawks of the XFL. He played college football at San Diego State University. Glover enjoyed a 13-yea ...
. The team was coached throughout White's four years by local legend
Bennie Edens
Bennie Edens (December 7, 1925 – February 8, 2008) was an American football coach. He was the head football coach at Point Loma High School from 1950 to 1998. He received many individual coaching awards (including NFL High School Coach of the ...
.
College career
After high school, White attended
Penn State #Redirect Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campu ...
, hoping to play for
hall-of-fame coach
Joe Paterno
Joseph Vincent Paterno (; December 21, 1926 – January 22, 2012), sometimes referred to as JoePa, was an American college football player, athletic director, and coach. He was the head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions football, Penn ...
, but he never saw significant playing time. After one season, he transferred to the
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory.
T ...
, where he spent a
redshirt
Redshirt, Red Shirt, or Redshirts may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Red Shirts'' (film), a 1952 film about Anita Garibaldi by Franco Rossi
* Redshirt (stock character), originally derived from ''Star Trek'', a stock character who dies soon after b ...
year before winning the starting quarterback role in 1993.
That season, with White at the helm, the
Wildcats
The wildcat is a species complex comprising two small wild cat species: the European wildcat (''Felis silvestris'') and the African wildcat (''F. lybica''). The European wildcat inhabits forests in Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus, while the ...
rolled to a 10-2 record and broke a 15-year drought to tie for their first (and, to date, only) share of the
Pac-10
The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its College football, football teams compete in the NCAA D ...
championship.
The Wildcats wrapped up the season in the
Fiesta Bowl
The Fiesta Bowl is an American college football bowl game played annually in the Phoenix metropolitan area. From its beginning in 1971 until 2006, the game was hosted at the Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. Since 2007, the game has been playe ...
, where White threw for 2 touchdowns en route to a 29-0 defeat of
10th-ranked Miami
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...
, the first shutout in Fiesta Bowl history.
White would continue as starting quarterback until 1995, finishing with 40 touchdown passes for his career and, perhaps more importantly, an unbeaten 3-0 record against the Wildcats' arch-rival
ASU Sun Devils, throwing 7 touchdowns and only one interception in those three games. A 2008 editorial in the Arizona Daily Star ranked him as one of the Wildcats' 10 best quarterbacks of all time.
Pro career
After college, White was not taken in the
NFL draft
The National Football League Draft, also called the NFL Draft or (officially) the Player Selection Meeting, is an annual event which serves as the league's most common source of player recruitment. Each team is given a position in the drafting o ...
, but signed with the
Houston Oilers
The Houston Oilers were a professional American football team that played in Houston from its founding in 1960 to 1996 before relocating to Memphis, and later Nashville, Tennessee becoming the Tennessee Titans. The Oilers began play in 1960 as ...
as a free agent immediately following the draft. He was subsequently traded to the
Atlanta Falcons
The Atlanta Falcons are a professional American football team based in Atlanta. The Falcons compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. The Falcons joined th ...
before finishing his pro career in the
Arena Football League
The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional arena football league in the United States. It was founded in 1986, but played its first official games in the 1987 season, making it the third longest-running professional football league in ...
, where he played for the
Tampa Bay Storm
The Tampa Bay Storm were a professional arena football team based in Tampa, Florida, US. It played in the Arena Football League (AFL). Originally the team was located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and operated as the Pittsburgh Gladiators. The f ...
during the 1997 season.
Quotes
White's inconsistent play inspired this memorable quote by ABC announcer
Mark Jones: "Against USC, he looked like
Dan Marino
Daniel Constantine Marino Jr. (born September 15, 1961) is an American former football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 17 seasons with the Miami Dolphins. After a successful college career at Pittsburgh and be ...
. Against Washington State, he looked like
Dan Quayle
James Danforth Quayle (; born February 4, 1947) is an American politician who served as the 44th vice president of the United States from 1989 to 1993 under President George H. W. Bush. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republic ...
."
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:White, Dan
1972 births
Living people
American football quarterbacks
Arizona Wildcats football players
Players of American football from San Diego
Point Loma High School alumni