How was Elvis Grbac named People’s Sexiest Athlete Alive?

One day in 1998, the Kansas City Chiefs received some unusual news, and it came from an unusual source: People magazine.

“We got a phone call referencing that Elvis Grbac was in line for Sexiest Athlete Alive,” said Bob Moore, the team’s longtime PR director. “To which a number of us were surprised.”

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Grbac was tall and handsome and could throw a football better than all but a few people on Earth. He had a degree from Michigan and a contract that paid him millions of dollars to play quarterback for the Chiefs. But Sexiest Athlete Alive?

“We were as surprised as anyone else,” Moore said. “But I would suppose the most surprised person was Elvis.”

A red-faced Grbac met with reporters after the magazine hit newsstands and sheepishly said, “There’s guys in that locker room that are 10 times better-looking than I am.” He was, he admitted, “dumbfounded” by the whole thing. He had no idea why or how he’d been picked. When reporters informed Marty Schottenheimer, the Chiefs coach, that his quarterback had been named the sexiest athlete in America, Schottenheimer replied, “Who, Gannon?”

As in Rich Gannon, Grbac’s backup.

He was on to something. Because the story of how Elvis Grbac came to be crowned People Magazine’s 1998 Sexiest Athlete Alive is the story of an all-time great screw-up.

I first came across the story after the Chiefs made the Super Bowl last Sunday. Feeling nostalgic for the place I grew up, I started Googling random players from my childhood: Bam Morris, Kimble Anders, James Hasty, Tamarick Vanover and, yes, Elvis Grbac.

On Grbac’s Wikipedia page, there are all the familiar categories. Early life, college career, NFL career and so on. But as I scrolled, I came across a category that was unlike the others — or like any category I’d ever seen on an athlete’s Wikipedia page.

“People’s Sexiest Athlete.”

The section contained just two sentences. “Grbac was featured as People’s Sexiest Athlete in 1998. Sportswriter Jeff Pearlman claims this was because of a mistake by a photographer, told to photograph ‘the Chiefs quarterback,’ who accidentally photographed Grbac instead of the intended Rich Gannon.”

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Sure enough, Pearlman had blogged about the story on his website more than a decade ago. At the time of Grbac’s selection in 1998, Pearlman worked for Sports Illustrated, which shared a building in New York with People. He heard the story from a friend who worked there.

I called Pearlman. He said he is still friends with the woman who told him the story years ago, and although he was skeptical she would talk, he’d ask.

Later that night, he texted me back: His friend was in.

“I was merely an observer,” Jennifer Wulff said when I called. “It was not me!”

Some of this is a little foggy because it has been 22 years since it all went down. For example, Wulff couldn’t remember who was on the cover of the “Sexiest Man Alive” issue that year, but when reminded that it was actually Harrison Ford, she burst out laughing. “Oooh, that was a bad choice, too!” she said. “It was already doomed.”

Wulff was only in her second or third year at People, but she knew how things worked. Every year the magazine put out a “Sexiest Man” issue, so every year the staff writers and correspondents at People had to select not only their pick for the overall Sexiest Man Alive — the guy who would smile on the cover — but also their picks for Sexiest Men in roughly a dozen assorted categories:

Sexiest Rock Star. Sexiest Politician. Sexiest Survivor.

Best as Wulff can remember, all the People staffers and correspondents were on a conference call when someone, somewhere blurted out, “The Kansas City quarterback is really hot.” It was eventually decided that, yes, the Kansas City quarterback would be that year’s Sexiest Athlete Alive.

“Somehow,” she said, laughing more now, “the photos came back and the interview came back,” (even more laughter), “and we were like, ‘What the hell? This is not …'” (a cascade of laughs).

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According to Wulff, the photo editors called in the staff to look at the pictures that would run in the magazine, and it didn’t take long for everyone in the room to realize that something had gone wrong. “One of the editors said, ‘This is the guy?’ Then we were looking it up and figured out that it was the other quarterback.”

As in Gannon, Grbac’s backup.

“And then it was too late,” Wulff said. “They felt so bad. We couldn’t cancel it at that point. It would be so mean.”

The magazine barreled forward. The writer quoted a teammate of Grbac’s who said, “He’s just a regular guy”; Grbac’s college coach at Michigan, who said, “I never pictured Elvis as a ladies’ man”; and his wife Lori, who had the last line: “His personality makes him sexy.”

ahem SEXIEST MAN ALIVE ELVIS GRBAC

— Trevor Risk (@SunshineSucks) November 28, 2016

So how did this happen?

Wulff calls it a “series of miscommunications.” Pearlman points out that sports and athletes were not exactly in People’s wheelhouse. But perhaps there is another explanation.

In 1997, Grbac was the Chiefs’ starter, but broke his collarbone and had to miss six games. Gannon stepped in. He beat John Elway, Warren Moon and Steve Young in consecutive weeks. “Rich Gannon’s a player,” Chiefs defensive tackle Joe Phillips said after one of those games. “Rich Gannon’s a winner.” The Gannon-led Chiefs overtook the Broncos late in the season to win the AFC West and finished the season 13-3.

But Schottenheimer believed a player shouldn’t lose his job to an injury, so all along he told Gannon — and everyone else who asked — that when Grbac returned, he would go right back to starting. “Marty was a man of his word,” former Chiefs center Tim Grunhard said, “and that’s what he did.”

Which is all a way of saying: At one point late in 1997, Rich Gannon was the Chiefs’ starting quarterback, and so it is entirely possible — perhaps even probable — that Gannon appeared on the radar of People magazine’s staffers who admired his symmetrical facial features and lush head of hair but failed to realize he was technically the team’s backup. When the assignment went out, it was to shoot and interview the Chiefs’ quarterback, who was at that point, once again, Elvis Grbac.

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That’s my theory, anyway.

The thing is that Grbac was probably the last person who would have wanted that kind of attention — or any attention. He fulfilled his media obligations, but he did not love press conferences or self-promotion. When the magazine came out, Grbac seemingly addressed it with reporters once, in one little sound bite which ended with him saying, “Let’s just drop it right there.” (He didn’t return an email to the Cleveland high school where he currently coaches football.)

“He was a very matter-of-fact guy,” Grunhard said. “He was a very serious person.”

“He was not a guy that wanted to be in the limelight or attract a lot of attention,” said Jim Steiner, his old agent.

In the photo that ran in People Magazine, Grbac is wearing simple jeans, a plain gray t-shirt, no shoes and a look that suggests he’d rather be anywhere else, doing anything else.

As Grunhard pointed out, “I don’t think Elvis would have minded at all trading places with Rich.”

(Top photo: Ed Zurga / AP Photo)