Looking Back at Cade McNown’s College Football Years
As one of the Chicago Bears’ superstars during his active years, the career of Cade McNown in the National Football League is already something that every NFL fan no doubt knows of. For those who want to know something a little different about the quarterback, then it is best to look back at his college football history instead.
Cade McNown was born on the 12th of January in 1977. He is a native of Portland Oregon but attended high school in California, particularly in San Benito High School. For his senior year, however, McNown moved back to Oregon and enrolled in West Linn High School, where he began playing football, taking the role of quarterback as well as free safety. As the champion quarterback of the school, he was able to take West Linn High as far as the seminals for the 1944 Oregon 4A division. Although his team eventually lost, newspapers were already hailing him as one of Oregon’s top college prospects for the NCAA football division. This may come as a surprise to many of McNown’s fans but he was not only active in his school’s varsity football team but the track team as well. In fact, in the time that he was not playing football and devoted entirely to working on his track and field performance, McNown was able to set a school record for the highest pole vault jump.
When McNown graduated from college, no one was truly surprised when UCLA immediately snapped him up to join their football squad. What did surprise many was the fact that McNown accepted the offer, given his Oregon background and the fact that he did leave his California high school for senior year in Oregon’s West Linn High. Apparently, this surprising decision was due to the fact that Brock Huard – who would be a NFL quarterback in the future himself – signed up with Washington. Both Huard and McNown were considered the best high school prospects in that year for collegiate football and McNown figured that being in UCLA would approve his prospects for a professional career in football.
1995 was a magical year for Cade McNown. Although many top high school picks do eventually make it to their dream NCAA football team, not many freshmen get to start – which was what McNown was able to achieve and in his fourth game at that. Even though UCLA eventually ended its season with a 7-5 record after a loss to Kansas in the Aloha Bowl, McNown had a lot to celebrate, having outperformed all other freshmen in most categories for that year. Because of this, McNown enjoyed even greater popularity and was already being touted by many as the next sure bet to the NFL in spite of his youth.
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