SAN DIEGO — If you're among the hundreds of thousands of San Diegans who rode the Super Bowl wave with the 1994 Chargers, raise a protein shake in honor of Bobby Beathard, the body-surfing football savant and fitness buff who drafted Junior Seau, hired Bobby Ross and weathered working for Alex Spanos.
Beathard, who died Monday at age 86 from complications of Alzheimer's disease at his home in Tennessee, burned as bright as a supernova in transforming the Chargers into a playoff team and AFC champion.
Boyish Bobby seemed in perpetual motion — scouting football players across America's college campuses, doing business on the phone, catching waves off San Diego's coast, running marathons and washing his car early on NFL Sundays outside his Leucadia home that overlooked Beacon's Beach.
As the Chargers' general manager, Beathard stuck to his scouting roots, traveling the country to attend collegiate practices and games but almost always attending Chargers games — even if it meant catching a red-eye to ensure he'd board the team's plane out of San Diego.
Spanos, like a restaurateur who hired a 5-star chef and wearied of him cooking, tried to confine Beathard to the team's offices in Mission Valley early in the GM's tenure.
Beathard responded by attempting to resign, a power play supported by the four Super Bowl rings he'd won with Miami and Washington plus his cachet with both local and national media.
When Dean Spanos, the team owner's son, agreed to take over day to day operations as team president in 1994, allowing the GM to maintain his scouting lifestyle, Beathard chose to stick around. The Chargers responded by earning the only Super Bowl berth in franchise history, two years after their third season under Beathard produced the franchise's first division title since 1981.
If Beathard's future Hall of Fame induction was made all but certain when Chargers linebacker Dennis Gibson knocked down Neil O'Donnell's pass in Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium — uncorking a San Diego celebration unsurpassed in the region's sports history — the rest of Beathard's tenure fell short of the yellow-jacket standard.
Deep into his decade-long run with the team, he didn't seem the same crisp Bobby, according to some Chargers employees. He got into a power struggle with Ross, the coach he'd wisely hired out of Georgia Tech after Beathard fired Dan Henning following the 1991 season. His frequent trades of first-round draft picks often backfired, as did his infamous selection of Ryan Leaf with the second pick of the 1998 draft.
Yet the Hall of Fame talent man's bigger regret of his Chargers tenure may have been not drafting Tom Brady, the Canton-bound quarterback who retired Wednesday.
The Chargers held three sixth-round picks in Beathard's final draft. Spurred by inside information, Chargers head coach Mike Riley had urged him to use one of those picks — the first one — to select Brady.
Riley had recruited Brady to USC but was unable to persuade Trojans head coach John Robinson to sign him. He'd grown close to Brady and his family, and followed his Michigan career.
After Beathard passed once on Brady, the Patriots pounced. Bill Belichick took the quarterback with the 199th overall selection.
In San Diego, the Bay Area native would have competed for a spot behind starter Leaf and veteran backup Jim Harbaugh. He would've had an ally in Riley.
Not only did Brady lead the Patriots to six Super Bowl trophies, he become a Chargers nuisance with ample help from Belichick's defenses and special teams units.
Brady was 10-2 against the Chargers, including a 3-0 record in the AFC playoffs.
Opposite Philip Rivers, he went 8-0, winning once when Rivers gamely competed a week after tearing an ACL.
Giving Riley an acute case of the what-ifs, Brady roasted the coach's 2001 Chargers for 364 yards and three touchdowns. He was making his third career start. The turnover-free performance foretold that veteran Drew Bledsoe, who'd been KO'd four weeks earlier by a Jets linebacker, would not be getting his job back.
By then, Beathard had retired.
His full-time successor, John Butler, rivaled the hot streak of Beathard's early tenure with the Chargers. He drafted LaDainian Tomlinson and Drew Brees and hired Marty Schottenheimer.
In their ruggedness, Butler's team resembled Beathard's Super Bowl Chargers, who were quarterbacked by Beathard trade acquisition Stan Humphries. Itl also looked like Beathard's Super Bowl winners with Miami and Washington to which he contributed as a scouting executive or GM.
Brady couldn't overcome Tomlinson and Brees in losses to the Chargers in 2002 and 2005. But he would win his final nine games against the franchise, despite the Chargers intercepting three of his passes in the 2006 playoffs.
Beathard and Brady. Brady and Beathard. Two NFL giants on the national scene, they took San Diego football fans on memorable rides.
