finale

Andrew Luck – like father, like son
By Elizabeth Merrill
ESPN.com
April 26, 2012
WHEELING, W.Va. -- On the last Interstate 70 stop before West Virginia mountains give way to Ohio green, a tall man with
perfectly swept hair works the White Palace ballroom. He is charming, almost presidential, which is good because this is a heavyhitter
crowd. The governor of the great state of West Virginia is here, as well as a roomful of bankers, lawyers and schmoozers. A
prayer is said before their supper of sautéed chicken and green beans, and cocktails are poured in plastic cups.
They have gathered on this late-April night to see Oliver Luck, a man whose bio in the Wheeling Chamber of Commerce dinner
program fills an entire single-spaced page. Luck is all over the West Virginia map these days, dining with Boy Scouts and rubbing
elbows with Rotarians, because this is what the athletic director for West Virginia University does in the springtime.
He does not rattle off his résumé, which sounds as if it could be a "world's most interesting man" script. Former NFL quarterback.
Rhodes Scholar finalist. World traveler. Former president and CEO of NFL Europe. Ran a Major League Soccer team that won a
couple of championships. Oh, and he has a law degree, which he picked up taking night classes while in the NFL. But Luck taught his
kids to be humble, which is why you'll hear very little about any of this tonight.
He steps to the center of the stage to give his speech about West Virginia athletics, and breaks code a bit, probably to break the ice.
"You know," Luck says as he grabs the microphone, "there's a whole page here dedicated to my bio. And if you go on Wikipedia right
now, what you'll see under my name is simply, 'Andrew's dad.'"
The crowd laughs.
"That's who I've become, and I'm very proud of it."
On Thursday night in New York City, in one of the most anticlimactic starts to an NFL draft, the Indianapolis Colts will select
Andrew Luck as the No. 1 pick. And the professional career of the most hyped quarterback since Peyton Manning will begin. What
can you say about this 22-year-old? That Oliver Luck's oldest boy has seemingly zero flaws, that he is so polished he would've been
No. 1 in the 2011 draft, that he is so good his arrival has jolted the quarterback landscape in three NFL cities?
Oliver can wax on about the Big 12, coal mining and West Virginia's economy, but generally, he holds off on saying much about his
son. Hyperbole is not the Lucks' thing. He will recognize that this is a big deal. The Lucks are about to become just the seventh known
father-son quarterback combination in the NFL, following a distinguished group that includes the Manning family. For years, analysts
have broken down the genetic success of Archie, Peyton and Eli, comparing arms, speed and size. But most of the time, a father's
influence goes way deeper than any kind of metrics.
Oliver Luck's influence is somewhat intangible. It's there in the huddle where, no matter the situation, Andrew is seemingly
unflappable. It's the reason Oliver's son, an All-American at Stanford who is about to get his degree in architectural design, is so wellprepared
and grounded.
The elder Luck, of course, wants nothing to do with any chip-off-the-old-block conversations. Talk to his mother, Luck says, because
Kathy plays just as big of a role in the making of Andrew Luck.
A few days after the grip-and-grin in Wheeling, as Oliver is driving to Charleston, W.Va., he says he's talked to Kathy -- and sorry,
she has politely declined to be interviewed. She likes being in the background.
"Have you ever heard of the book 'Freakonomics'?" Oliver says. "So there's these two economics professors, and they're really
interesting guys, and they wrote these books. And it's really all about sort of false thinking. They try to go in and look at a number of
different phenomenon. Does A really cause B? You know, causation.
"They wrote a chapter in the book about major league baseball players. What characteristics at what age would be an indicator that the
kid is really going to make it to the major leagues? Is it when they were born? … Is it size?"
At the end of the chapter, he says, the authors tell the reader that none of these factors comes close to the only important one, which is
having a father who also played major league baseball. So maybe it's just in the genes.
Luck is a voracious reader, by the way. He has no problem talking about that. Oliver is currently tackling a book on the history of
Spain. He's read it before. In the hundreds of interviews Andrew has done since arriving at Stanford, he is occasionally asked about his
favorite thing to do besides football. His answer is usually the same.