The Road to 1991 Perfection: You'll Never Guess Where Billy Joe Hobert Lives
Billy Joe Hobert lives not far from campus and the football stadium. Five minutes tops.
Hearing that, you might think he has a Montlake or Ravenna address.
No, typical of this forever unconventional ex-University of Washington quarterback, who twice turned Seattle totally upside down three decades ago — for leading the Huskies to a national championship and then for unintentionally prompting a conference investigation that derailed a potential college football dynasty — he resides a little farther east.
OK, Bellevue or Issaquah then.
More east than that.
Two hundred and seventy-five miles east.
Hobert occupies a modest house, one with a comfortable deck and a compact backyard with a rockery, which he shares with a feisty little dog, in a most unlikely setting.
Since April, he's been a Pullman, Washington, homeowner.
Yes, this permanent part of Husky football folklore, this unforgettable guy who's always been self-deprecating and unfiltered and outlandishly entertaining just like Terry Bradshaw, lives among the enemy. Make that the arch rival. Make that willingly.
Hobert comfortably moves through Cougar country, more often than not unrecognized, but he's certainly most welcome among the local inhabitants these days. That's because he's loaned his talented son, Joey, to the still passing-crazy Washington State University football program as a freshman wide receiver on scholarship.
In the process of turning over his offspring to Wazzu, Billy Joe got a chance to witness the Palouse up close for the first time.
Without blinders and a helmet on.
Hobert had been to Pullman just once occasion before — for the 1990 Apple Cup — but he remembers going only from a charter plane to the team hotel to Martin Stadium without getting a good look at the surroundings.
He had a preconceived notion about this rural outpost, prompted by those closest to him.
"The running joke in the family was you go east until you smell it and south until you step in it," Hobert wisecracked. "My whole life I was taught to hate this part of the state."
This ode to Billy Joe is the first in a series of articles and videos that will replay the UW's 1991 national championship season, which is the apex of Husky football, beginning now.
We don't have a 2020 season, so we'll use '91 as a conversation piece. While there's no mystery to how things turned out over 12 games, no one should ever get tired of hearing how it was done. We'll tell vignettes all the way through the magical run, using a wide variety of resources.
This wasn't the road to Perdition, rather a four-lane freeway to perfection for the Huskies.
Hobert changed his mind about Pullman after former Cougars coach Mike Leach and then the new guy Nick Rolovich recruited his 5-foot-10, 180-pound son, prompting an official visit. Joey Hobert is an overly athletic type who caught 78 passes for 18 touchdowns as a senior, scoring 25 overall, in high school in San Juan Capistrano, California.
The Cougars drew two commitments in one from the Hobert family in this deal.
"I intentionally came out here a day early before the official recruiting trip so he could see for himself how nasty and ugly and grotesque and pitiful this place was because that's what I thought it was," Hobert said. "Once we started driving around, I thought, "Holy crap, everything about this place fits my personality.' "
Dad and son have a midfield conversation.
Billy Joe Hobert photo
Pullman still is a little on the sleepy side, but it has a first-class golf course and a Pac-12 school for this retired professional athlete to preoccupy himself. What more he could need?
He calls his house Cozy Country. He can walk the dog and go watch football practice without much effort. And he successfully has put California, where he took up residence after playing for the Los Angeles Raiders and three other NFL teams, in the rear-view mirror for the most part.
"It's great for training quarterbacks and to do things year round," Hobert said of the Golden State. "But with the politics and the attitudes of what's going on down there, I was hoping to get out. I've been uncomfortable down there for 20 years."
He's a little thicker around the middle, but sparse on top. He's still the same free-wheeling guy who helped the Huskies run the table and started the dismantling of the Husky empire by accepting a loan from an Idaho businessman that the late Don James, Billy's legendary coach, adamantly insisted never broke any rules.
So this is home for Hobert now, his Eastern Washington outpost resembling a town he once knew before urban sprawl swallowed it up whole.
He'll go back to California in November to have neck surgery and again next year to have his battered back repaired. He'll go back there to eventually collect his wife who's working and other kids and bring them north.
Otherwise, he's got a Pullman zip code.
"It reminds me of Puyallup 20 years ago," Hobert said of his new digs. "I freaking love the Palouse and how beautiful it is over here."
(Editor's note: Any fans who want to offer a video memory of 1991, just shoot it wide angle with a mobile phone, a minute or two in duration, and send it to danraley580@gmail.com. We'll run it.)
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