A co-worker in the early 90's was one of Mark's best friends growing up so I got to meet him a few times. I had the pleasure of playing golf with him in a tournament we host and then watched him make ace the next day playing in the group in front of me. I high fived him going past as he was walking down the next hole. Ouch. His brothers were great athletes as well who I've also met, and it seems like a terrific family. Mark lost a son to a brain tumor at a young age so he's definitely had battles all the way through. Great dude and a deserved SB MVP.
https://247sports.com/college/washingto ... J2SXsbSuZQRypien earned first-team All-Pac-10 honors as a WSU junior in 1984 but when the much-hyped 1985 Cougs stumbled to a four-win season he was mostly an afterthought on NFL draft boards. Only when BYU's Robbie Bosco and Illinois' Jack Trudeau dropped out at the last minute was Rypien invited to the Senior Bowl, just five days before kickoff. He was brought on to back up Mike Norseth of Kansas. But Norseth went down in the first quarter with a nasty gash on the face and Rypien came on to fire three TD passes, completing 13 of 17 tosses for 168 yards.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/j ... h-to-wash/Mark Rypien’s greatest NFL season started out sketchy. His team’s owner, Jack Kent Cooke, called him “a bloody idiot.”
And when a D.C. area magazine held a referendum among fans on which Washington Redskins player they’d most like to see traded. Mark Rypien “won” in a landslide.
Nothing like making you feel wanted.
Rypien, a sixth-round draft pick out of Washington State, deserved better. He’d been named an injury replacement to the Pro Bowl after the 1989 season, and in 1990 quarterbacked the team to a playoff win over the Philadelphia Eagles.
All this while his base salary was a skimpy – even for the time – $275,000. Cooke and the Redskins fans were getting more than their money’s worth out of Rypien.
When that contract ended, Rypien reasonably asked for a salary around the average for NFL starting quarterbacks, something north of $1 million a season. When talks stalled, he held out the first six days of the 1991 training camp.
“Mr. Cooke was a bit crotchety, but he wanted his team to do well,” Rypien said. “He wasn’t happy with me, but after I signed, he said, ‘OK, Mark, God bless ya, now go win us a Super Bowl.’ ”
Rypien dutifully followed Cooke’s orders, and well and truly earned his raise by quarterbacking the team that is considered by some as the best Super Bowl-winning team in history. Rypien passed for 292 yards and two touchdowns to earn Super Bowl XXVI MVP honors in a 37-24 win over the Buffalo Bills.
