Guy Emory Benjamin (born June 27, 1955) 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 ...

who played six seasons in the

National Football League 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 ...

College career

Benjamin played

high school football High school football (french: football au lycée) is gridiron football played by high school teams in the United States and Canada. It ranks among the most popular interscholastic sports in both countries, but its popularity is declining, part ...

at James Monroe High School in North Hills, California and matriculated at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in 1974. He split starting time with

Mike Cordova Mike may refer to: Animals * Mike (cat), cat and guardian of the British Museum * Mike the Headless Chicken, chicken that lived for 18 months after his head had been cut off * Mike (chimpanzee), a chimpanzee featured in several books and documenta ...

at first, but took over as full-time starter in 1976. In 1977, under coach Bill Walsh, Benjamin led Stanford to a 24-14 victory over

LSU Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 near ...

in the 1977 Sun Bowl and won both the

Sammy Baugh Trophy The Touchdown Club of Columbus was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1956 by Sam B. Nicola at the request of state auditor James A. Rhodes, who later became governor of the state. Nicola served as the club's president until his death in 1993. More th ...

(top passer in college football) and the

W.J. Voit Memorial Trophy The W. J. Voit Memorial Trophy was awarded by the Helms Athletic Foundation from 1951 to 1978 to the outstanding college football player on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. The recipient was determined based on votes cast by West ...

, (outstanding college football player on the Pacific Coast).

NFL career

Benjamin was drafted by the

Miami Dolphins The Miami Dolphins are a professional American football team based in the Miami metropolitan area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member team of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The team pla ...

in the second round of the

1978 NFL Draft The 1978 NFL draft was the procedure by which National Football League teams selected amateur college football players. It is officially known as the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting. The draft was held May 2–3, 1978, at the Roosevelt Hote ...

. He played two seasons behind

Bob Griese Robert Allen Griese (pronounced ; born February 3, 1945) is a former American football quarterback who earned All-American honors with the Purdue Boilermakers before being drafted in 1967 by the American Football League's Miami Dolphins. Gries ...

and Don Strock, then spent one season as Archie Manning's backup with the New Orleans Saints. He was reunited with Bill Walsh when he joined the San Francisco 49ers in 1981, where he earned a Super Bowl ring as Joe Montana's backup in

Super Bowl XVI Super Bowl XVI was an American football game between the National Football Conference (NFC) champion San Francisco 49ers and the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Cincinnati Bengals to decide the National Football League (NFL) champ ...

. He retired in

1984 Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast A ...

following surgery.

After football

After leaving football, Benjamin directe
Athletes United for Peace
an organization founded by Olympic athletes after the U.S.

boycott A boycott is an act of nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organization, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons. The purpose of a boycott is to inflict som ...

of the

1980 Moscow Olympics The 1980 Summer Olympics (russian: Летние Олимпийские игры 1980, Letniye Olimpiyskiye igry 1980), officially known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad (russian: Игры XXII Олимпиады, Igry XXII Olimpiady) and commo ...

. He also founded the Sports in Society Institute at the

New College of California New College of California was a college founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1971 by former Gonzaga University President John Leary. It ceased operations in early 2008. New College's main campus was housed in several buildings in the Mission ...

, and directed its degree-completion program for former student-athletes. He now lives in Hawaii, where he was offensive coordinator for the University of Hawaii football team for a while. In 1988, he was to be the head coach of the World Indoor Football League's Las Vegas Aces, but that league folded before it could get off the ground and the Aces' bid to join the Arena Football League was turned away, so that the Aces never played a game. He also coached the

Hawaii Hammerheads The Hawaii Hammerheads was an indoor American football team in the Indoor Professional Football League (IPFL) during the 1999 season. The team was owned by George Hetherington and played home games at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center in Honolulu, Hawa ...

of the Indoor Professional Football League to the league championship in 1999, the team's only season. He then became the first head coach of the IPFL's

Portland Prowlers The Portland Prowlers were a professional indoor football team based in Portland, Oregon. Playing as a member of the Indoor Professional Football League (IPFL) for the 2000 season, they played their home games at the Memorial Coliseum. This was ...

before returning to Hawaii, where he coached the

minor league Minor leagues are professional sports leagues which are not regarded as the premier leagues in those sports. Minor league teams tend to play in smaller, less elaborate venues, often competing in smaller cities/markets. This term is used in Nor ...

Hawaiian Islanders of the Arena Football League

af2 The AF2 (often styled as af2, and short for arenafootball2) was the Arena Football League's developmental league; it was founded in 1999 and played its first season in 2000. Like its parent AFL, the AF2 played using the same arena football ru ...

. As of 2012, he is Executive Director of th
Hawaii Medical College

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Benjamin, Guy 1955 births Living people All-American college football players Miami Dolphins players New Orleans Saints players Players of American football from Los Angeles San Francisco 49ers players American football quarterbacks Stanford Cardinal football players