Randel Edward Vataha, (born December 4, 1948) 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 wi ...

player, a wide receiver for seven 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 majo ...

(NFL), the first six with the

New England Patriots The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East divisio ...

Early years

Born in

Santa Monica, California Santa Monica (; Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. Census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing to ...

, Vataha lettered in four sports at

Rancho Alamitos High School Rancho Alamitos High School is in Garden Grove, California. It is a member of the Garden Grove Unified School District and serves north-central Garden Grove and a section of Stanton. The high school first opened in the spring of 1957 with no se ...

in Garden Grove; he was a

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 Am ...

in football and graduated

College career

Vataha made the transition to wide receiver at Golden West Junior College in then transferred up the coast to

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

of the

Pacific-8 Conference The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its football teams compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; formerly Division ...

1969 This year is notable for Apollo 11's first landing on the moon. Events January * January 4 – The Government of Spain hands over Ifni to Morocco. * January 5 **Ariana Afghan Airlines Flight 701 crashes into a house on its approach to ...

under head coach John Ralston and became one of quarterback

Jim Plunkett James William Plunkett (born December 5, 1947) is a former American football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for sixteen seasons. He achieved his greatest professional success during his final eight seasons with the ...

's favorite receiving targets. As seniors in

1970 Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). Between 10,000 and ...

, they connected on a 96-yard touchdown a Stanford record which stood until

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...

(by a 98-yard pass from

Joe Borchard Joseph Edward Borchard (born November 25, 1978) is an American former Major League Baseball (MLB) outfielder. Borchard was the 12th pick of the first round in the 2000 Major League Baseball Draft out of Stanford University by the Chicago White Sox ...

Troy Walters Troy McHenry Walters (born December 15, 1976) is an American football coach and former player who is currently the wide receivers coach for the Cincinnati Bengals of the National Football League (NFL). Walters played as a wide receiver and punt ...

). At the end of that season, Vataha scored the last touchdown in Stanford's upset of #2

Ohio State The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best public ...

in the Rose Bowl, a ten-yard pass from Plunkett with eight minutes both are members of the

Stanford Athletic Hall of Fame The Stanford Cardinal are the athletic teams that represent Stanford University. As of June, 2022, Stanford's program has won 131 NCAA team championships. Stanford has won at least one NCAA team championship each academic year for 46 consecutiv ...

. Plunkett won the

Heisman Trophy The Heisman Memorial Trophy (usually known colloquially as the Heisman Trophy or The Heisman) is awarded annually to the most outstanding player in college football. Winners epitomize great ability combined with diligence, perseverance, and har ...

and was the first pick of the

1971 NFL Draft The 1971 National Football League draft was held January 28–29, 1971, at the Belmont Plaza Hotel in New York City, New York. The Boston Patriots, who did not officially change their name to New England Patriots until after the draft, used th ...

; Stanford climbed to eighth in the final AP poll with a Vataha was nicknamed "

Rabbit Rabbits, also known as bunnies or bunny rabbits, are small mammals in the family Leporidae (which also contains the hares) of the order Lagomorpha (which also contains the pikas). ''Oryctolagus cuniculus'' includes the European rabbit sp ...

" for his moves on the field and worked one summer at

Disneyland Disneyland is a theme park in Anaheim, California. Opened in 1955, it was the first theme park opened by The Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. Disney initially envisio ...

in costume as one of the

NFL career

Vataha was selected in the 17th round of that NFL draft (418th overall) by the

Los Angeles Rams The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Greater Los Angeles, Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC Wes ...

. Released in training camp, he was signed as a free agent by the

, where he was reunited with Plunkett. He was named to UPI's AFC all-rookie team in and played six seasons with the Patriots. Vataha caught 178 receptions for 3,055 yards. He also had 23 touchdown receptions while with the Patriots. He was waived by the Patriots before the start of the 1977 season and signed with the

Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. It is the t ...

. He ended his career with the

Vataha, along with Stanley Morgan, was one of two wide receivers named to the New England Patriots 1970’s All-Decade Team.

After football

After retiring from football, Vataha was a founding member of the

United States Football League The United States Football League (USFL) was a professional American football league that played for three seasons, 1983 through 1985. The league played a spring/summer schedule in each of its active seasons. The 1986 season was scheduled to be ...

(USFL) in

1983 The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to TCP/IP is officially completed (this is considered to be the beginning ...

, owning 50% of the

Boston Breakers The Boston Breakers were an American professional soccer club based in the Boston neighborhood of Allston. The team competed in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). They replaced the original Breakers, who competed in the defunct Women's ...

. He is now the president o
Game Plan LLC
a company that specializes in the buying and selling of professional

References

External links

*

– college football – Randy Vataha {{DEFAULTSORT:Vataha, Randy 1948 births Living people American football wide receivers Stanford Cardinal football players New England Patriots players Players of American football from Santa Monica, California Green Bay Packers players United States Football League executives