SportsFanLive Reports

Bobby Sabelhaus was the nation's top-rated quarterback prospect in 1995. He signed with Florida and coach Steve Spurrier but never played a down for the Gators. This weekend, Sabelhaus returns to Gainesville for the first time in 13 years, and in this exclusive to SportsFanLive.com, he shares the details of his recruitment, his struggles and his eventual departure from Florida. Honest, unvarnished and unfiltered ... Sabelhaus gives us an unprecedented look inside the high-stakes world of big-time college athletics. Here is Part Three: A Shocking Diagnosis, Leaving Gainesville and Life After Football.

If you missed Part 1 of the story about recruiting, click here.
If you missed Part 2 of the story about his time at Florida, click here.

By Bobby Sabelhaus

My spring game was a catastrophe. I think my stats were 2-5 with two interceptions. Spurrier yanked me from the lineup because he said he “wanted to give my team a chance to win.” There was an article written in a local paper after that game with the headline “The Lost Gator.” My relationship with Spurrier was strained, and I knew my time in Gainesville was limited. I went home that summer to Baltimore to try and clear my head and make sense of things.

My father had read about renowned sports psychologist Bob Rotella and introduced the idea of me sitting down with him. Bob had worked with some of the most talented PGA golfers of the time. After my brief stint with hypnotherapy, I was reluctant and had a hard time believing anything would get me back on the football field. While his advice and guidance were valuable, my time with Dr. Rotella was unsuccessful.

Unbeknownst to me and my family, I was suffering from something much deeper. A pat on the back wasn’t going to cut it. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but I did know that I had lost all motivation to do even the simplest tasks in life. There were some days where getting out of bed seemed impossible. I was in a constant fog. My family was unbelievably supportive and wanted to get to the bottom of why I was feeling this way.

I ended up at Johns Hopkins Hospital and met a doctor in the psychiatry department. After just two visits the doctor diagnosed me with Bipolar II Disorder. I was shocked! Not me, there had to be a mistake. I wanted to believe I was stronger than that. I came to realize later that it didn’t have anything to do with strength. After the denial subsided, I was ready and willing to treat it. This was unchartered territory for my family and me, but I knew with them beside me, I would make it through this.

One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was walking away from my scholarship at UF. I had worked so hard to get an opportunity to play Gator football and then, it was gone. I kept thinking how could this happen to me? This was not a part of the plan. At 19 years old, I had never faced such adversity in my life. Having dyslexia was certainly a challenge, but depression was a whole new mountain to climb. I knew I had to put my health first, though, and being a part of Spurrier’s program proved too much for me. I hated abandoning my teammates. We spent a lot of time together and talked about winning championships with one another. I know there were a handful of guys who probably didn’t understand why I left, but it was the best thing for me at the time.

About six months after I left UF my mother received a call from an academic advisor who said she’d held a conference for coaches so they would better understand how to teach players with learning differences like dyslexia. She told my mother Coach Spurrier walked up to her after the conference and said he “had failed me as a coach. He didn’t understand my needs as a player.” Whether those were his exact words or not makes little difference to me, but I was relieved to hear student-athletes

Bobby Sabelhaus with Eric Kresser, Coach Steve Spurrier, Danny Wuerffel and Brian Schottenheimer (who's now the Jets offensive coordinator).

with learning challenges were being better understood and that their needs were being met.

Once my transfer hit the newspapers I was contacted by a few coaches. Phillip Fulmer of Tennessee, Barry Alvarez of Wisconsin and Bob Toledo of UCLA all expressed interest in me. But I still wasn’t ready to step back on the football field. I ended up transferring to a junior college in Los Angeles to maintain my eligibility and then went on to sign with West Virginia. My time as a Mountaineer was brief after learning that they wanted me to play tight end.

After leaving West Virginia my family was introduced to NFL draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. who happened to be from Baltimore and had followed my football career since high school. He read about my situation and told my parents that they should consider sending me to meet quarterback guru Steve Clarkson. At the time he had worked with Gino Torretta and Todd Marinovich to prepare them for the NFL draft. Since then he’s trained Matt Leinart, J.P. Losman, Jimmy Clausen and Ben Roethlisberger. We contacted Clarkson and he agreed to sit down with me so I flew out to Los Angeles where he was based. After we talked in his office for a bit he took me onto the practice field so he could see where I was in terms of ability. We threw the football around for a bit and within a short while he said he could get me throwing with confidence again and back onto the football field with a Division I team.

Within a week I was living in Los Angeles and training with Clarkson. My training with Clarkson was beyond helpful. I spent five months working with him on every aspect of the game. I had regained my confidence to throw the football and was exceeding my own expectations. He worked on getting me a scholarship to his alma mater, San Jose State. After enrolling and having a good spring practice, I had positioned myself to compete for the starting job. With things seemingly on the mend, I never would have guessed that my depression would rear its ugly head again. I just wasn’t able to get it under control. I was immature. I wasn’t taking my medication. I had taken care of getting myself back in shape physically, but mentally I was not where I needed to be. I realized that the time had come for me to give up my dream of playing football.

Ultimately, my experience at UF shattered my confidence and I wasn’t able to go on and succeed in football anywhere else. Playing for Spurrier may have exacerbated the problem but I realize whether I had chosen Michigan or another school, my depression would have surfaced regardless. Dyslexia and bi-polar disorder are highly misunderstood conditions. It was a supremely humbling experience at a young age and I learned invaluable life lessons. Everyone has to face challenges in their life at one point or another. All you can do in life is keep moving forward, keep learning from every experience, and reflect upon mistakes and setbacks so that the same things don't keep happening over and over again.

Over time I learned that I had to take responsibility for my own happiness and success. I had to make drastic lifestyle changes in order to cope with my depression. I figured out what worked for me, a combination of exercise, eating well and not drinking has made all the difference. The California sunshine doesn’t hurt either!

I’m now in Los Angeles living my new dream as a film producer. My father has always told me “winners come back” from adversity. When you hit a roadblock, find a way around it and just keep moving! I’m doing my best to meet life’s challenges head-on every day. Some days are harder than others but I have the power to control my thoughts by dispelling the seeds of doubt and replacing them with seeds of promise.

I’m thrilled to be going back to UF this weekend. It’ll be refreshing to see Gainesville through a new set of eyes.

Bobby Sabelhaus was the nation's top-rated quarterback prospect in 1995. He signed with Florida and coach Steve Spurrier but never played a down for the Gators. This weekend, Sabelhaus returns to Gainesville for the first time in 13 years, and in this exclusive to SportsFanLive.com, he shares the details of his recruitment, his struggles and his eventual departure from Florida. Honest, unvarnished and unfiltered ... Sabelhaus gives us an unprecedented look inside the high-stakes world of big-time college athletics. Here is Part Two: Why He Picked The Gators and How He Started Drowning In The Swamp.

If you missed Part 1 of the story about recruiting, click here.

By Bobby Sabelhaus

My path to the University of Florida began in 1992 when Baltimore was looking to attract an NFL franchise to the city. Its mantra was “Give Baltimore the Ball.” The New Orleans Saints played the Miami Dolphins in a preseason game. My father and I attended the game and afterwards we were introduced to Archie Manning, who was doing the color commentary for the Saints. He found out I was an aspiring quarterback and volunteered to guide me through the recruiting process because his son, Peyton, was getting heavily recruited at the time.

My father ended up reaching out to Archie a couple of times for advice, and he recommended I attend Steve Spurrier’s summer football camp at the University of Florida between my junior and senior year. After spending a week at UF, my interest was definitely piqued. I got some time with Coach Spurrier while at the camp and was hoping in the back of my mind that they’d end up recruiting me. To my surprise they did.

My recruiting trip to UF was everything I’d hoped for and more. My family came down with me because their opinion mattered the most to me. I spoke with my dad recently and he recalled a fun story about that visit. Spurrier called my parents’ hotel at 9 p.m. on a Friday night and asked them to join him and his wife Jerri at their house for a drink. Later that evening, he brought my dad into his living room and on the mantel was none other than Spurrier’s 1966 Heisman Trophy, which he had won while playing quarterback at UF. My father said his heart skipped a beat; he had never seen a Heisman before. It meant the world to me that my father got to experience this.

A lot of time and thought went into choosing a school but I finally narrowed it down to Florida and Michigan. My father and I made up a pros and cons list of everything from weather to women, along with categories like: how many times each team threw the ball per game, how many quarterbacks each school had on its depth chart, football tradition, etc. You get the idea. The point is we took this decision very seriously. The one intangible we overlooked was MY GUT FEELING and looking back this was the most important thing of all.

On paper UF looked good, but deep down there was something that didn’t sit well with me. My father and I knew Spurrier was going to be a challenge to play for. Many people warned me and I was well aware of his tumultuous relationship with Terry Dean, former standout quarterback who was benched his senior year and replaced by Danny Wuerffel. But when you’re an overly confident high school football player getting recruited by every college in America, you feel invincible to a degree. I didn’t take into account how crucial my relationship with the coach would be. I needed a mentor and a coach all in one, someone who knew when to be tough and when to give praise.

I remember it like it was yesterday, Coach Spurrier visiting my house in Baltimore along with assistant coach Bobby Pruitt. Spurrier never promised me I’d start but said he’d give me the opportunity to compete. I understood that and wasn’t looking for assurances. I was only concerned about two things prior to committing to UF. First, was Spurrier equipped to handle my dyslexia? I was diagnosed with dyslexia at a very young age. I even went to a school that specialized in meeting the challenges of students with learning differences. I definitely had to work hard at it, but I did learn to cope with my dyslexia and went on to excel both in the classroom and on the field. I knew the UF playbook was not light reading. In fact, it was about 6 inches thick, so I wanted Spurrier to commit to me that I’d get the help I needed in learning the intricacies of it.

My other concern was that Spurrier would attempt to make significant changes to my sidearm throwing motion. When I attended his summer football camp before my senior year, he had started trying to tweak it a bit. I had thrown the same way for as long as I could remember, and the changes he introduced early on were not going to work for me. I was by no means above being coached. I realized I had a lot to learn about playing the quarterback position and was eager to learn as much as I could from Spurrier, who truly is an offensive genius. But I also knew that each starting quarterback in the NFL had a different throwing motion. And Spurrier promised me he would not change mine.

After that pivotal meeting, I committed to UF and wanted to hit the ground running as the newest Gator. I offered to help the coaches in the recruiting process by calling other recruits who were still on the fence about attending UF. I called future NFL superstar Randy Moss’ house and spoke to his mother. He ended up signing with Notre Dame but it would’ve been sensational to get Moss on board with an already super talented recruiting class! Our 1995 class was one of the most highly touted classes in UF history. Jevon Kearse, Reggie McGrew, Johnny Rutledge, Erron Kinney, Cooper Carlisle and Tim Beauchamp all signed with Florida that year.

My first couple weeks on campus were a blast! Getting to know my teammates and having the freedom of being away from home to begin a new challenge was exciting. But it was a bit of a wake-up call too. I remember the first day of summer conditioning. A bunch of bright-eyed freshman ready to conquer the world, until about halfway through the drills when we're all hunched over gasping for a breath. The party had officially ended and the courtship of recruiting was over. We were all freshmen trying to earn the respect of our coaches and teammates. We all said goodbye to our high school glory days and said hello to working harder than we ever had before.

But going into the summer of 1995 I felt really confident. Confident in my abilities and confident I had made right decision. I was throwing the ball better than I ever had. I remember articles after seeing me in summer two-a-days that praised my performance. One reporter wrote that the program was going to be in good hands with me at quarterback once Wuerffel graduated.

Spurrier had told me before the season that I’d be red-shirting my first year at school, which was common for quarterbacks. He hadn’t signed a quarterback in three years, so the idea was for me to red-shirt my first year and by my red-shirt sophomore year, I would take the helm from a departing Wuerffel. It was the perfect plan because unlike other freshmen who stayed at home, I got to suit up, be on the sidelines and travel with the team. My one responsibility, which obviously led us to the SEC Championship that year, was to block our offensive signals from the opposing team. Yep, not one signal got past me. Wuerffel also made me sit next to him on the team plane because he was superstitious and when I sat next to him, we won. The team went undefeated up until the Fiesta Bowl National Championship game against Nebraska. I didn’t sit next to Danny that game.

Just as I felt like my career at UF was off to a good start, I was running the scout team at practice one day and Spurrier pulled me off to the side, instructing me to lift my elbow when I threw. He

wanted my delivery to be higher; he told me a guy with my height needed to utilize it. I immediately thought back to the promise he made me about my sidearm throwing motion and within an instant, I knew that all bets were off. But he was my coach, so I did what he told me.

The simple fact is I had never thrown any other way and changing it now seemed impossible. I always had the ultimate confidence in my ability to deliver the football accurately and with velocity. The minute he started planting these seeds of doubt and criticizing my style I knew I was in trouble. I was already having a tough time grasping the playbook, so when my physical ability was under attack, my confidence began to erode. To add insult to injury, he never lived up to his other promise either. We didn’t have an offensive coordinator so I didn’t have anyone to discuss the offense with besides the other QBs. I recall being in the film room one afternoon, studying the playbook and game tape by myself. Learning the Florida offense wasn’t exactly a walk in the park but I was determined to master it. As I was busy running through tape, Spurrier walked by the room and peeked his head in to see what I was doing.

He said nothing else other than, “Do you even know what you’re looking at?” A couple days later at practice, after throwing a touchdown pass to Chris Doering, Spurrier came up to me and asked if that play was “just a bad decision or a lack of talent?” I hadn’t run the play exactly like he wanted. I could feel myself drowning in Spurrier’s sink-or-swim coaching tactic. It got to the point where I would dread going to meetings and practice. Wuerffel knew intimately well what I was going through. He had been there before with Coach and he tried to help me cope. But Danny had the unique ability to deflect Spurrier’s criticism and prioritize his life differently. For Danny, God always came first, then family, then football.

Even though I too had a strong foundation, I still couldn’t shake the constant berating; I internalized everything. The thought of disappointing my parents and letting everyone down back home was too much to bear. I could feel myself slipping into a depression, which was something I’d never felt before. At the time, I couldn’t begin to understand how difficult it was going to be to pull out of it.

I had a good relationship with my academic advisor who was assigned to me for personal and academic development at the university. Every school has them for the student athletes. He suggested I sit down with a campus psychologist. Although I was a bit apprehensive, I was open to anything to help me get through this difficult time. I met with the psychologist who wasn’t too much older than I was. He ended up trying to hypnotize me. I just remember sitting in a dark room thinking: How did it come to this?

Part Three: Life after Gainesville.

Bobby Sabelhaus was the nation's top-rated quarterback prospect in 1995. He signed with Florida and coach Steve Spurrier but never played a down for the Gators. This weekend, Sabelhaus returns to Gainesville for the first time in 13 years, and in this exclusive to SportsFanLive.com, he shares the details of his recruitment, his struggles and his eventual departure from Florida. Honest, unvarnished and unfiltered ... Sabelhaus gives us an unprecedented look inside the high-stakes world of big-time college athletics. Here is Part One: The Recruiting Process.

By Bobby Sabelhaus

A few months ago my old fraternity brother, Heath Randolph, from the University of Florida invited me to the Gator homecoming game against Arkansas this Saturday. It has been a long time since I’d been back to Gainesville. In fact, I hadn’t been back since I asked for my release from the storied football program, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to return to Gainesville after all these years. I took some time to mull it over, but after a few days I decided it was finally time to return to the school that offered me a scholarship to play quarterback in 1995.

It has been 13 years since I left the University of Florida, so why am I choosing to write about my experience now? There are a several reasons. I’m writing this for the highly recruited high school athlete who’s having a difficult time dealing with the pressures that come with playing for a major college football program. I’m writing this for the passionate football fan that is curious about the recruiting process. And I’m writing it for me.

I’ve never had the opportunity to publicly talk about my journey through the recruiting process, my experience as a Gator and what valuable lessons I learned along the way. You see, my story’s always been told by someone else: Reporters, bloggers, even rabid fans on their chat boards. To my surprise, without fail, every year around national signing day there is some mention of my name. Usually it involves reporters predicting the fate of some young quarterback recruit: Will he be the next Tim Tebow in the making or yours truly?

It seems that a lot of people have had an opinion as to why I didn’t live up to the lofty expectations that were placed on me before attending UF. Now it’s time that I set the record straight, and not to sound melodramatic, but maybe I need to make peace with the place and have some closure once and for all. And who am I kidding? I’m also going back to Gainesville to have a good time! Catching up with old friends, watching the game and stopping by The Swamp Restaurant for old times sake.

During summer two-a-days before my senior year in high school at McDonogh, a small prep school in suburban Baltimore, a bunch of my teammates and I were sitting around before practice, when one them brought out a recruiting magazine. I think it was Super Prep Magazine. At the time Super Prep was a popular recruiting publication for coaches and recruiting enthusiasts. All of these Internet recruiting sites like Rivals.com didn’t exist back then. I began leafing through the magazine and found that my teammate Dwayne Stukes had been ranked as one of the top defensive backs in the country. Dwayne was an outstanding player, he ended up getting a scholarship to the University of Virginia and went on to play in the NFL. So you can imagine, I was proud of him.

But I won’t lie, I couldn’t help but wish my name was on one of those lists too. When I didn’t find it, I didn’t give it much thought really. I put the magazine down and continued suiting up. But then one of my buddies called over to me saying he found my name; I must have missed it. To my surprise it was on the first page, listing me as the Top Quarterback prospect in the entire nation. From there, my name started popping up in various magazines. Max Emfinger's National Blue Chips and Tom Lemming's Football Report both had me ranked as the No. 1 quarterback prospect in the country, while some others had me in their top five.

Then after the season, the coveted Parade Magazine’s All-American honors were announced and I made it on their list along with future NFL stars Randy Moss, Charles Woodson, Shaun Alexander and Kevin Faulk. That's when I felt like I might really have a chance to take my love for football to the next level. My childhood idols Dan Marino and John Elway had made that list in high school so I felt

like I was in pretty good company. I looked at all these accolades as an opportunity to live out my childhood dream of playing college football.

I was having the time of life during the recruiting process! To grow up following teams like Michigan, Florida State, Florida, Miami, Ohio State, Boston College, Notre Dame and then in turn to get recruited by them was surreal. I remember checking the mail one day and getting an envelope with a gold helmet in the left hand corner; it was from Notre Dame! Lou Holtz called me to ask if I could run the option and I told him he had the wrong guy. So even though I wasn’t a good fit to play for the Fighting Irish, it didn’t matter to me, I was just as pumped to get a letter from them. As the recruiting process continued, I began to get calls from head coaches like Steve Spurrier, Bobby Bowden, Phillip Fulmer, Gary Moeller, Barry Alvarez, John Cooper and even Bill Walsh on his second tour as the head coach for Stanford.

Coach Walsh questioned my “C” in biology and wanted me to write a college essay. I explained to him that no other college program had asked me to do that but he said they required it! I didn’t ever write that essay, and I didn’t make a visit out to the Golden State but either way it was awesome speaking with the legendary Bill Walsh. Dan Henning, who at the time was the Boston College head coach and is now the offensive coordinator for the Miami Dolphins, told my family while sitting in our living room that I was the first recruit he had visited in 25 years.

My whole family couldn’t help but get swept up in the excitement, especially my father, who was an avid college football fan. He got to meet some of the greatest football coaches in America. One memory stands out in particular. My parents accompanied me on my official visit to Michigan where Gary Moeller was coaching at the time. Michigan was very high on my list of potential schools because of its rich tradition and long history of having big pro-style quarterbacks. Guys like Elvis Grbac, Todd Collins and Jim Harbaugh all fit the mold of a Wolverine signal caller. As we were touring the football facility, one of the assistant coaches introduced my family to the legendary former head coach Bo Schembechler. My father, being from Ohio, had grown up watching Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler battle it out in the “Ten-Year War” between Ohio State and Michigan. (A sidenote for the Buckeye fans out there, I regret not taking one of my official visits to Ohio State, I chose Duke instead, even after being on Kirk Herbstreit’s Columbus sports radio show).

Needless to say, Michigan was a fun visit. They did a great job of wooing me by taking me into the stadium where my jersey and number were hanging in the locker. Seeing the name “Sabelhaus” with the number “16” on it is something I will never forget. After this official visit, Moeller came to my house in Baltimore to convince me to commit to the Wolverines. I can vividly remember him putting his hand on my knee and asking, “What is it going to take for me to get you to play for Michigan?” I replied, “You’re going to have to throw it more coach.” He responded, “If you come here, we will.” From here on out my mother blared the Michigan fight song from our stereo system when I got home from school ... there was no question where she wanted me to go. It was the toughest decision I ever had to make but when I didn’t commit to Michigan, it ended up offering my scholarship to a future NFL Hall of Fame quarterback. Guy named Tom Brady. Maybe you’ve heard of him. You’re welcome, Tom.

My next official visit was to Florida State, and it came after I had just broken the 25-year-old Maryland state passing record. It was a Friday night and FSU quarterback coach Mark Richt, the current Georgia head coach, was in the bleachers watching the game. We were scheduled to jump on a commercial flight together to Tallahassee that night but there weren’t any flights available so Coach Richt and I hitched a ride on former Florida Governor Lawton Chiles’s state jet. It was a true “Johnny Be Good” moment! Just Coach Richt and I talking X’s & O’s the whole way down to FSU. It didn’t get much cooler than that.

On my visit I got to spend some time with coach Bowden. I recall sitting outside his office and I could hear an assistant coach prepping him. I could hear him say to Bowden, “You’re about to meet Bobby Sabelhaus, a quarterback recruit from Baltimore, Maryland. He’s a Christian and his family is originally from Ohio.” Funny to think Bowden was getting briefed for our meeting!

Part Two: Bobby looks back at why he chose Florida and how he started drowning in Steve Spurrier’s sink-or-swim coaching tactics.

Part Three: Life after Gainesville.