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

, 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

championship. The Wildcats wrapped up the season in the

, 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