Only one quarterback in the deep history of Arizona State football has led the Sun Devils to a Rose Bowl Championship.
Nearly three decades later he finally saw it for himself.
“I had never watched our ’87 Rose Bowl game until like two days ago,” current Sun Devil radio analyst Jeff Van Raaphorst told Sports360AZ.com’s Brad Cesmat in a phone interview Wednesday morning. “I watched it with my son, Cade. I tell ‘ya, I was awful. I thought I played average.”
Apparently many didn’t agree after Van Raaphorst was named the Rose Bowl Player of the Game after completing 16-30 passes for 193 yards and two touchdowns in a 22-15 win over Michigan and their quarterback Jim Harbaugh.
Van Raaphorst, who self-admittedly has always been his own worst critic, said he never had a personal copy of the game and only knew about the re-airing on Pac-12 Network after he was tipped off by a friend. He was out of town at the time but recorded it and watched it with some of his family.
“It was fun,” “Rapper” explained to Cesmat. “My older two kids had never seen it. That was pretty cool. I don’t know, I’ve kind of stayed away.”
Shortly after the Rose Bowl a fire in the condo where he was living took everything and changed his perspective from living in the past to focusing on the present.
“It was something I never really wanted to watch.”
In the end he seemed happy to relive what many believe to be the greatest win in program history.
“I gotta tell ‘ya it was kinda fun. Fun to see some guy’s names I hadn’t seen in awhile.”
Van Raaphorst was inducted into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame in 2006.
