Moon, Warren 1956–

Warren Moon 1956–

Professional football player

A Man Among Women

A Long Apprenticeship

A Change of Scenery

Sources

For more than ten years Warren Moon has been a starting quarterback in the National Football League, most of that time with the Houston Oilers. Now in the twilight of his playing career, Moon has achieved the status of respected elder statesman in the NFL. Having long ago overcome questions about his talent—based on his size and subtly, on his race as well—he brought the Houston Oilers into playoff contention and possibly earned himself a future place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

In 1994 Moon signed a two-year contract with the Minnesota Vikings in search of the one laurel that has eluded him—a chance to play in the Super Bowl. Sporting News contributor Bob Sansevere notes that the citizens of Minnesota “are behaving as if Warren Moon is the second coming [of Christ]… Vikings fans have been so eager for so long for a miracle-working quarterback that they think Moon is capable of just about anything, including turning Gatorade into wine.” Moon’s talents may fall short of that mark, but he has certainly proven himself to be a gifted quarterback and a capable leader on the NFL level.

At the outset of his professional career, Moon was not even considered a candidate to play in the NFL. Despite the fact that he came out of the University of Washington with a Rose Bowl victory and a wealth of individual awards, he was passed over until the late rounds of the 1978 college draft. Disappointed, but still confident of his ability, Moon decamped for the Canadian Football League, where he became a championship winner with the Edmonton Eskimos.

Moon told the Rocky Mountain News that from his high school years onward he always had to work harder to gain the positions he deserved. “I’ve had to kind of take that extra step at every level just to show what I can do, whether it be junior college or Canada before I got a chance to play in the NFL,” Moon said. “I’ve been told all my life that I didn’t have what it took. It was the people who told me I couldn’t do things that kept me going. I have a lot of confidence in myself.”

A Man Among Women

A native of Los Angeles, Moon was the middle child and only boy of seven children. Warren was seven when his father died while waiting for a liver transplant. His mother, a nurse, raised the family by herself, and young Warren was expected to be the “man of the family.” In Sports Illustrated, Leigh Montville wrote: “The boy learned to cook and sew and iron and clean house. To this day he cannot do the [stereotypical] ‘man’ things, working under the hood of a car or fixing plumbing or electrical problems, but he can bake three dozen cookies with ease.”

At a Glance…

Born Harold Warren Moon, November 18, 1956, in Los Angeles, CA; son of Harold (a laborer) and Pat (a nurse) Moon; married Felicia Hendricks, March 8, 1981; children: Joshua, Chelsea, Blair, Jeffrey. Education: West Los Angeles Junior College, 1974-75; University of Washington, B.S., 1978.

Professional football player, 1978—. Quarterback for Edmonton Eskimos, 1978-83, Houston Oilers, 1984-94, Minnesota Vikings, 1994—.

Selected awards: Named Pacific-8 Conference Player of the Year, 1977; named Most Valuable Player in the Canadian Football League (CFL), 1983; named National Football League (NFL) Rookie of the Year, 1984, and NFL Man of the Year, 1989; named Associated Press NFL Offensive Player of the Year, 1990.

Addresses: Office —c/o Minnesota Vikings, 9520 Viking Dr., Eden Prairie, MN 55344.

The Moon family lived in a rough neighborhood, but their mother worked hard and saw to it that they were provided with educational and cultural perks. Warren grew up with strong moral values. Montville notes that the youngster “decided that he could play only one sport in high school because he had to work the rest of the year to help the family, and the sport would be football. Quarterback would be the position. He had discovered that he could throw a football longer, harder, and straighter than anyone he knew. He would take that arm all the way to the pros. That was his goal.”

Using the address of one of his mother’s friends, Moon enrolled at Hamilton High School, a mixed-race school in a middle-class section of Los Angeles. There he worked hard in his studies and tried out for the football team. He saw little playing time until his junior year, when he took over as varsity starting quarterback. In his senior season, Hamilton High reached the city playoffs, and Moon was named to the all-city team. But college recruiters showed little interest in him because he was only 5’11” and 165 pounds. Eventually Moon gave up his quest for a place at a four-year school and instead enrolled at West Los Angeles Junior College. His freshman year football exploits there raised some eyebrows, and he was named Western State Conference Player of the year in 1973.

That strong performance caught the attention of University of Washington coach Don James, who offered Moon a chance to transfer to a school playing big-time football. Moon went north, despite his apprehension about attending a college that had experienced racial tension under a previous coach and where fewer than four percent of the students were black. As a University of Washington sophomore, Moon warmed the bench. As a junior he became starting quarterback, and the Huskies stumbled to a 5-6 record. Moon was booed unmercifully by his own fans. Sometimes the jeers took on racial overtones. As Montville puts it, “amid the bad feelings it became easy to put Moon’s face on the team’s failure.” Showing great restraint, Moon refused to acknowledge the heckling, and when the boos turned to cheers he accepted the praise without bitterness.

His tenacity was rewarded in 1977, when the Huskies won their conference championship and met the University of Michigan in the 1978 Rose Bowl game. The underdog Huskies won the Rose Bowl under Moon’s leadership, and he was named Rose Bowl Most Valuable Player and the Pacific-8 Player of the Year. Overall, Moon passed for 3,277 yards and 19 touchdowns in his collegiate career.

A Long Apprenticeship

Although Moon managed to win over Washington’s fans, he failed to convince skeptical NFL scouts of his playing ability. His Rose Bowl performance notwithstanding, he was rated just the tenth best quarterback in the 1978 draft. “The stereotype was that he was a black quarterback and he was going to run around like a madman, but he wouldn’t be able to throw very well,” former Edmonton Eskimos and Houston Oilers coach Hugh Campbell told the Los Angeles Times. So, once again, Moon decided to prove himself elsewhere, signing with the Eskimos of the Canadian Football League.

During Moon’s six seasons in Canada, he put up some stunning numbers—21,228 yards passing and 1,700 yards rushing. He had back-to-back 5,000-yard passing seasons. His 5,648 yards passing over 16 games in 1983 remains an all-time high for pro football. In addition, the Eskimos won five straight Grey Cup trophies as champions of the CFL from 1978 to 1982.

By 1984 Moon had nothing left to prove. When his contract with Edmonton expired, seven NFL teams sought to sign him as a free agent. Moon initially leaned toward the Seattle Seahawks, which would allow him to return to his college town, but he eventually chose the Houston Oilers, the team that had hired his former Edmonton coach, Campbell. The Oilers tendered a five-year, $5.5 million contract which, at the time, made Moon the highest paid player in the NFL—before he even played in a league game.

When Moon joined Houston, it was the sorriest franchise in the NFL, having won only three games in the previous two seasons. “One of the challenges of Houston was to be part of a growing situation,” Moon’s agent, Leigh Steinberg, told the Houston Post. “He knew it would take longer [to be on a championship team], but when it came, he knew he would be an instrumental part of the building process.”

In 1984 Moon was a rookie sensation. His six years in the CFL gave him a wealth of experience, and he threw for a then-Houston-record 3,338 yards on the season. Still the Oilers went 3-13, finishing last in their division. The next season, after the club won just five of its first 14 games, Campbell was fired and a defensive-oriented coach, Jerry Glanville, took over. “Those early years [in Houston] were really hard for me to deal with at first,” Moon told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “There were some uncertainties about my career here because of the coaching change. That left me disenchanted… Plus, I think most of the people looked at the amount of money I was paid and just decided I must be a star all of a sudden. I didn’t respond well to it.”

Moon faced enormous pressures because he was the only black starting quarterback in the NFL at the time. “The stereotypes are there,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “The opportunities haven’t been given. But I think I’ve been accepted pretty well throughout the league. As I improved, you started not to hear the word black put in front of quarterback all the time. And now I’m pretty much recognized as just another quarterback in the league.” The fans were harder to win over, however. More than once Moon’s wife and children were accosted in the stands during football games by disgruntled spectators who hurled racial epithets and complained about Moon’s performance.

Gradually Moon made his presence felt with the Oilers. Between 1987 and 1993 the team made the playoffs every year. Twice Moon was rated among the NFL’s top five quarterbacks, and twice he started in the Pro Bowl, the league’s all-star game. Glanville was fired after the 1989 season and replaced by Jack Pardee, a college coach known for helping design the “run-and-shoot” offense, a system based on speedy receivers and a strong-armed quarterback. Moon finally found the right coach for his talents, and the 1990 football season was one of his best.

That year Moon threw for 4,689 yards—the fifth highest total ever in the NFL at the time. He was named the league’s top offensive performer of the year by the Associated Press. “People tend to say Super Bowl quarterbacks are the great ones,” Moon told Sports Illustrated that year. “If I get there, I don’t think anyone could argue with my play.” The Oilers seemed to have a chance of “getting there” in 1990 until Moon was injured in the next-to-last game of the season. He sat on the sidelines during the playoffs as the Oilers lost to the Cincinnati Bengals.

Moon was well on his way to establishing a Houston Oilers passing record, but those all-important playoff victories failed to materialize. Perhaps the most disappointing playoff game for Houston was the 1992 wild card match between the Oilers and the Buffalo Bills. Moon and the Oilers led Buffalo 20-3 at halftime, but the Bills roared back and took the game to overtime, where they won it, 41-38. In 1993 the Oilers endured another bitter playoff loss, this time to the Kansas City Chiefs. Moon, for all his perceived talent, had failed to advance his team into Super Bowl contention. And time was running out for him as he edged toward 40.

A Change of Scenery

In a 1990 poll by the Houston Post, Moon was voted the most popular athlete in Texas, even beating out baseball legend Nolan Ryan. Moon had established a residence in Houston and had spent much time and money on charitable causes in that region; his Crescent Moon foundation sent 82 children to college on scholarship in 1993. Unfortunately, Moon’s popularity eroded as the Oilers failed to advance in the playoffs. In 1993 he was traded to the Minnesota Vikings, where he signed a two-year, $5.5 million contract. “This might be the fresh start I needed at this stage of my career,” Moon told the Sporting News. “You can look at my age and say, ‘Well, he’s 37.’ But you just need to watch me play, and that will let you know what I’m all about. As far as winning a Super Bowl… that’s the thing that’s left for me to do. That’s what I want to accomplish before I’m done.”

Warren Moon’s legacy is not yet complete. If it were, he might be considered a great but unlucky quarterback whose Oilers teams failed six straight years to advance beyond the first round of the playoffs. Moon himself hopes to see a Super Bowl start at least once before he retires. “I don’t want to see the festivities anymore,” he told Sport magazine. “I want to be there the way you’re supposed to be there.” He added: “Even though my career would not be unsuccessful if I ended up without a championship, it would definitely not be complete. If I could go out on top, I think it would be a great ending to a great story.”

Sources

Akron Beacon Journal, November 1, 1990; January 10, 1991.

Houston Post, December 25, 1987; March 13, 1988; November 13, 1988; April 8, 1989; July 29, 1990.

Los Angeles Times, November 18, 1989; November 3, 1990.

Rocky Mountain News, November 18, 1990.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 28, 1990.

San Jose Mercury News, November 8, 1987.

Seattle Times, December 2, 1990.

Sport, February 1994, pp. 36-40.

Sporting News, May 23, 1994, pp. 34-5.

Sports Illustrated, November 5, 1990; December 24, 1990; September 27, 1993, pp. 62-74.

—Mark Kram