Finally a 'Legend,' Billy Joe Hobert is proof that time heals

It all feels so quaint now, doesn't it?

Billy Joe Hobert won two Rose Bowls, spent most of a decade in the NFL, was drafted by the Chicago White Sox and once set the course record at High Cedars Golf Club in Orting, a 61 that could have been a 59 if not for a three-putt on 18.

He’s 53 now, but the former Washington quarterback is still developing new skills, owing in part to his son, Joey, and his own college football career at Texas State in San Marcos, where Billy Joe lives for the time being.

“This is the first year I’ve ever tailgated,” he said Thursday morning, “and I think I’m pretty good at it now.”

Saturday brings a change of venue.

Nearly 32 years removed from the saga that rendered Hobert something of a UW pariah, he will be recognized between the first and second quarters of Saturday’s game against Michigan as the week’s “Husky Legend.”

Longtime followers of the program might have thought they’d never see the day. Now that it’s finally here, though, it hardly feels controversial at all, time and progress having sufficiently de-villainized the affable quarterback from Puyallup.

The school has invited him to be recognized two or three times before, Hobert said, but it always conflicted with Joey’s games or his work training high-school quarterbacks in California (he’s since retired). He was invited to attend the first game of the Steve Sarkisian era, against LSU in 2009, which he obliged, and Hobert said he also attended the final game at the old Husky Stadium, against Oregon in 2011. That’s it for home games since he finished playing.

This time, UW reps did their homework. Texas State played at Troy on Thursday night.

“I wasn’t ever gnawing at the bit and losing sleep over not being up here,” he said. “But at the same time, once it became official, it’s like, ‘ahh, dude, this is pretty cool.’ This is really cool.”

After starring at Puyallup High, Hobert became a Rose Bowl co-MVP and a national champion at Washington, stepping into a starting job in 1991 after Mark Brunell injured his knee that spring. The Huskies never lost a game Hobert played in, and they were 8-0 and ranked No. 1 in November 1992 when the bomb dropped: a Seattle Times report detailed that Hobert had accepted loans totaling $50,000 from a nuclear engineer in Idaho, and was sure to draw scrutiny from the NCAA.

The loans were not against the law, and the nuclear engineer was not a UW booster. But the loans were not conditioned on a specific repayment schedule, and Hobert had no assets. The optics of Hobert spending the money on cars and guns, among other frivolities, probably didn’t help, and the Pac-10 ultimately ruled the loans improper.

If the same thing happened today, of course, fans would be appalled … that their starting quarterback had only received 50 grand, and only as a loan. (In fact, $50,000 will only get you two plates at Friday night’s NIL fundraiser dinner with Bill Belichick.)

Hobert isn’t too interested in discussing the events of 1992, except to emphasize that the money he received was, in fact, a loan, one he says he paid back with interest, and which he believed had been “cleared through proper channels. The people I talked to, I just messed that part of it up, I guess.” 

“It doesn’t make too much sense to rehash a lot of crap,” Hobert says now. “I might be an asshole, but I try to follow the rules, for the most part.”

This has always been Hobert’s M.O., blunt and self-deprecating, always quotable, “brother” and “dude” punctuating his speech. The rule in his family, he said: “If you’re going to suck, suck going full speed.” It’s in line with how he describes his own playing career. “I never really thought of myself as a quarterback,” he said. “I just thought of myself as a football player.” More than anything, he just wanted every opponent to feel like he played harder than they did. He threw 22 touchdown passes as a third-year sophomore in 1991 and ran for five more, helming the offense of the greatest team in school history.

By August 1993, he became the face of UW’s downfall, the player seen as most responsible for the sanctions that followed: probation, a two-year bowl ban, scholarship and revenue reductions. Don James resigned in protest, deeming the punishment too harsh. Hobert, ruled ineligible for the final four games of the 1992 season — three of them losses — had already turned pro and become a third-round draft pick.

Thing is, it wasn’t just Hobert, and that’s the part people tend to overlook. The Pac-10 alleged 24 separate NCAA violations within the program and tagged UW for “lack of institutional control.” And if you are of the mind to castigate past UW players who broke rules to accept cash, you’d best read up on the late Hugh McElhenny, or a fellow named Torchy Torrance, and a culture of impropriety so rampant in the 1950s that it led the Pacific Coast Conference to disband.

Hobert didn’t bruise or bleed any less for the school because somebody helped him buy a Camaro, and NIL has changed perception of other antiquated violations. Reggie Bush got his Heisman Trophy back and is welcome again at USC. Eric Dickerson came clean, in good humor, about the origins of his gold Trans-Am, and SMU, of all programs, appears to have fully embraced its cheatin’-era stars.

Hobert has more time to tell you about his five kids, of whom he is immensely proud. His oldest daughter is a nurse. Another is finishing her doctorate in psychology. Another is a schoolteacher in Sacramento, and his youngest daughter is a financial advisor.

“I travel a lot,” he said.

Joey, the youngest of the five, caught 76 passes for 895 yards and eight touchdowns last season at Texas State, after putting up more than 1,200 yards as a sophomore at Utah Tech. He leads the team with 32 receptions and five touchdowns this season. 

Prior to the season, Joey worked with a San Marcos pizza restaurant to create “The Joe Dirt,” a specialty pie nodding to the nickname his teammates have bestowed upon him, in support of NIL at Texas State. Other schools offered big money for him to transfer, Billy Joe said, “but he’s so close to graduating, and he really does want to make a legitimate go at playing in the NFL.” Plus, he’s at Texas State to play for Craig Stutzmann, the receivers coach who originally recruited him to Washington State, where he began his career in 2020. (As further evidence that life can take you to unexpected places, Billy Joe moved to Pullman back then to be near his son and fell in love with the place. “The rolling hills, mountains, nature,” he said. “The Palouse is stunning.”)

“He’s so much more level-headed than me it’s embarrassing,” Billy Joe said. “I blame his mom for that.” On the field, he said, “he doesn’t take a play off. If he doesn’t get the ball, he’s blocking with everything he’s got. That’s what makes me more proud. I could give two craps about how good he is. I just love how he plays the game.”

UW offered to foot the bill for this weekend — airfare, lodging — but Billy Joe instead decided to drive up early from San Marcos. Most of his family, including both of his grandsons, still live around here. Since arriving, he’s played golf twice with his dad — at High Cedars and Tahoma Valley in Yelm — “and I am regretting it, because damn, I’m hurting.” 

I didn’t ask for his scores. I assume they exceeded 61.

It’s funny: I was mid-question, asking for Hobert’s thoughts on modern-day NIL, when my 3-year-old daughter burst into the home office. 

She wanted to watch Paw Patrol. 

Billy Joe heard this and laughed. His three oldest daughters are married, and his youngest daughter is getting married in January, “and it feels like we just got through playing roughhouse, like, last week. It blows your mind how fast it goes.” Eighteen Christmases, he reminds. It’s not many.

When he steps onto the field Saturday, Hobert admits he might feel a bit self-conscious — “it just feels like, ‘hey, look at me, look at me,’ and I’m not that guy anymore, you know?” — but he’s grateful for the moment. “The fact it’s actually happening is really cool. It’s truly an honor,” he said. He’ll set up his tailgate on Friday night and party with his family beginning early Saturday. Burgers, bratwurst, chili and mashed potatoes are on the menu.

“I’m 53,” he said. “All that stuff happened over 30 years ago. And the only thing that I care about in life right now is the fact that my grandsons think I’m the greatest grandfather on the planet.”

— Christian Caple, On Montlake