1. Joseph Robert Garcia Kapp was an American football player, coach, and executive.
36 Facts About Joe Kapp
1. 2.
Joe Kapp played college football as a quarterback for the California Golden Bears.
3.
Joe Kapp played professionally in the Canadian Football League with the Calgary Stampeders and the BC Lions and then in the National Football League with the Minnesota Vikings and the Boston Patriots.
4.
Joe Kapp led the BC Lions to their first Grey Cup Championship victory in 1964.
5.
Joe Kapp returned to his alma mater as head coach of the Golden Bears from 1982 to 1986.
6.
Joe Kapp was the general manager and president of the BC Lions in 1990.
7.
Joe 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.
8.
In November 2006, Joe 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.
9.
Joe Kapp is the only player to play quarterback in the Super Bowl, Rose Bowl, and the Grey Cup.
10.
Joe Kapp was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Florence Garcia, of Mexican-American heritage, and Robert Joe Kapp, of German descent.
11.
Joe Kapp 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.
12.
Joe 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.
13.
Joe Kapp earned a bachelor's degree in physical education from the university in 1959.
14.
Joe Kapp held the UC Berkeley record for most rushing yards by a quarterback until Chase Garbers broke it in 2021.
15.
Joe Kapp joined the Stampeders for his rookie season in 1959.
16.
The move paid off for the Lions when Joe Kapp led the team to a Grey Cup appearance in 1963.
17.
Joe Kapp loved to hit and when he took off on a run he'd try to run over defenders.
18.
Joe Kapp ended up signing with the NFL's Minnesota Vikings in a multi-player "trade" between the CFL and NFL teams, one of the very few transactions to ever occur between the two leagues.
19.
Joe Kapp had spent the 1965 and 1966 seasons with the Vikings, but wanted to return to Canada.
20.
Joe Kapp, now waived from the CFL, was free to sign with the Vikings, who had previously claimed his NFL playing rights from Washington.
21.
Joe Kapp completed only 47 percent of his pass attempts with 8 touchdowns and 17 interceptions.
22.
Early in the 1969 season, Joe Kapp tied an all-time record when he threw for seven touchdown passes against the defending NFL champion Colts on September 28.
23.
Joe Kapp reported to the newly renamed New England Patriots' training camp in 1971, refused to sign a standard contract, and departed.
24.
Joe Kapp started an anti-trust lawsuit vs the NFL, claiming the standard NFL contract was unconstitutional and a restraint of trade.
25.
The court had ruled that Joe Kapp's trade was indeed restrained.
26.
In 1982, Joe Kapp was hired as the head football coach at his alma mater, the University of California, Berkeley.
27.
Joe Kapp was notified that he would be released after the Big Game, played in Berkeley.
28.
Joe Kapp's tenure was marked by his tendency to recruit ex-NFL players such as Mark Gastineau whose best football days had passed.
29.
Joe Kapp was fired eleven games into the Lions' schedule; his most valuable legacy was the signing of quarterback Doug Flutie, who would blossom into a star in the CFL during the 1990s.
30.
In 1992, Joe Kapp was named the head coach of the Arena Football League's Los Angeles Wings, but the franchise never came into existence in Los Angeles, and moved to Sacramento as the Attack.
31.
Joe Kapp lived in Los Gatos, California, and made himself available as a guest speaker.
32.
Joe Kapp had a wife, four children, and four grandchildren.
33.
In 2015, grandson Frank Joe Kapp continued the Cal football tradition as a freshman tight end with the Golden Bears.
34.
The source of the bad blood between Joe Kapp and Mosca was a hit Mosca made on Joe Kapp's teammate Willie Fleming in the 1963 Grey Cup game.
35.
In February 2016, the San Jose Mercury News reported that Joe Kapp was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
36.
Joe Kapp died from complications of the disease at a care facility in San Jose, California, on May 8,2023, at age 85.