John Mills Follows In Grandfather's Husky Football Footsteps

During University of Washington spring football practice, the tall, slender, older man would grab a folding chair in the Dempsey Indoor facility and set it up as close to the action as he could without thinking twice about it.

For the next couple of hours, he would sit back, with legs crossed, and watch everything intently.

Sometimes Joe Ryan, outfitted in purple Husky gear, was dangerously close to the hulking offensive linemen repeatedly running into each other, but he never seemed unnerved by any of it for a couple of reasons.

One, Ryan used to be one of them, an earnest UW offensive tackle so long ago. Secondly, his extraordinarily talented grandson John Mills currently is a Husky freshman offensive guard, now wearing his grandfather's jersey No. 72, and he was there to see him hit people.

"My grandfather is a great dude," Mills said this week. "I've looked up to him all my life."

Mills, of course, is a UW starter, a huge star in the making, someone who was originally committed to Texas but who became Montlake-bound in the end with those family connections awaiting his arrival.

His grandfather wasn't the sole reason for his change of teams during his spirited recruitment, but it didn't hurt.

"Really him being here and him being close wasn't like a make-or-break deal, but, dude, it is awesome to have him here," Mills said, "and being able to fulfill that bloodline of playing here and doing the offensive lineman and playing the Husky scheme just like he did."

Joe Ryan, John Mills' grandfather, appears in the Rose Bowl program. — Joe Ryan (72), John Mills' grandfather, appears in the Rose Bowl program. | Rose Bowl

While the 6-foot-6, 342-pound Mills comes to the UW from San Francisco, Ryan arrived in 1960 from Wenatchee High School in the Central Washington city of the same name, some 140 miles away, as a 6-foot-5, 216-pound offensive lineman.

As a high school junior in 1959, Ryan got a taste of the UW when he and his Wenatchee High basketball team qualified for the state tournament at then-Hec Edmundson Pavilion, now Alaska Airlines Arena.

He was the team's tallest player and averaged 3.9 points per game. The Panthers lost to Ballard and Kelso and went home with a 16-8 record.

Ryan spent four seasons as Husky football player during the end of the game's single-platoon era and he made a bid to become a starting offensive tackle for a 1963 UW team that advanced to the Rose Bowl and lost to Illinois 17-7.

John Mills is just a big guy, with dimensions of 6-foot-6 and 342 pounds. | Dave Sizer photo

In the build-up to the game in Pasadena, Ryan was shown hitting a blocking sled in a photo published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Newspaper accounts also told how he and other Huskies sang their own rendition of the "12 Days of Christmas," with customized verses making light of their practice routines and their coaches' involvement.

Six decades later, John Mills is experiencing everything his grandfather did as a UW football player and more. There's a mutual respect between generations.

"He's always helpful and always helped me out with anything I need," Mills said. "He's always there for me, always a big supporter of me. I'm very grateful to have him here, for sure."

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: