Rickey Foggie

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Rickey Foggie (born July 15, 1966 in Laurens, South Carolina)^[1] is a former quarterback who was successful both collegiately and professionally. Foggie was the starting quarterback for the Minnesota Golden Gophers for four seasons, before going on to play professionally in – first the Canadian Football League, and then later in the Arena Football League^[2]. Foggie is currently an assistant football coach in both the af2 and in high school football.^[3]

[edit] College

He became a successful option quarterback in the South Carolina high school ranks and was recruited by Lou Holtz to play collegiately at the University of Minnesota, where Holtz was coming in to take over the program, after surprisingly leaving powerhouse Arkansas. The Gophers were coming off a 1-10 season under Joe Salem, from the previous year, and it didn’t take long for Foggie to assert himself as the starting quarterback for Minnesota as a true freshman. The Gophers finished the 1984 season with a 4-7 record in Holtz’s first season as coach and Foggie’s first year as signal caller, as Foggie started to show off some of his versatile skills, both as a runner and a passer and give Minnesota fans a glimpse of a more promising outlook for the Gophers, with Foggie entrenched at quarterback. The season was topped off by a surprising upset over Iowa and star quarterback Chuck Long, which returned the Floyd of Rosedale to Minnesota after a two year absence.

In 1985, Foggie’s sophomore season, the Gophers made further strides to be a solid program, as they finished off the regular season at 6-5 and earned an invitation to the Independence Bowl, which would be their first bowl game in 8 years. Among the Gophers five defeats were close losses to Oklahoma (who would go on to win the National Championship) and Ohio State. Meanwhile, when the Notre Dame head coaching position became available, Lou Holtz was offered and accepted the job to coach the Irish. Assistant John Gutekunst was named the new head coach and led the Gophers in their bowl game against Clemson, which the Gophers won to raise their final season record to 7-5.

The Gophers would also finish 6-5 the following year in 1986 and earn another bowl invitation – this time to the Liberty Bowl. They would lose to Tennessee in this matchup. Foggie continued to develop into a better and more mature quarterback and was also helped along by the addition of talented freshman running back, Darrell Thompson, who emerged as a star in the making, that season. The highlight of that season was the Gophers upset of Rose Bowl bound Michigan at The Big House – earning Minnesota the Little Brown Jug for the first time in 9 years.

In Foggie’s senior year in 1987, the Gophers again finished 6-5, however this year they failed to receive a bowl invite.

[edit] CFL

Thought of as running quarterback who wouldn’t succeed in the National Football League, Foggie was bypassed in the 1988 NFL Draft. Although many felt he would have a better chance of making the NFL at another position, Foggie opted to remain a quarterback and joined the Canadian Football League. In the CFL, he quickly became a star, leading the British Columbia Lions to the Grey Cup in his very first season.^[4] Later, he would join the Toronto Argonauts, where he would be an instrumental part of the league’s highest scoring team.^[5] Foggie would later play for the Edmonton Eskimos and the Memphis Mad Dogs in the CFL.^[6]

[edit] AFL

Next he would embark on a career in the Arena Football League, where he would play 8 seasons spanning 10 years. He started off his AFL career back in Minnesota, where he had starred collegiately, as the starting quarterback of the expansion Minnesota Fighting Pike, who would only play that one season at the Target Center in 1996. Then he would quarterback the New Jersey Red Dogs from 1997 to 2000, where he would attain his greatest success in the AFL, throwing for over 8,700 yards and 155 touchdowns in his first three seasons with the club.^[7] In 2001, he played for the Florida Bobcats,^[8] where he may have had his best season in the AFL – setting personal season highs with 3619 yards passing and 69 touchdowns.^[9] In 2002, he played for the Detroit Fury and the Toronto Phantoms, and then after a season off in 2003, he played one final season in 2004 with the Carolina Cobras. He finished his AFL career with 17921 yards passing, 325 touchdowns and a 96.38 quarterback rating.^[10]

[edit] Coaching

At 38, Foggie retired on the playing field, but continued on in arena football as a coach. Foggie moved to the lower tier af2 to pursue this. In 2005 as the offensive coordinator of the Amarillo Dusters, he orchestrated the highest scoring offense in the af2, with a 55.8 average.^[11] In 2006, he got his only head coaching job to date, when he took over the Everett Hawks after an 0-3 start.^[12] After only six games as the head man,^[13] there, Foggie was lured over to the Macon Knights by head coach Derek Stingley to be their offensive coordinator. ^[14] In 2007, Foggie followed Stingley to Albany, Georgia to be the offensive coordinator for the South Georgia Wildcats.^[15] Foggie also agreed to be the offensive coordinator of Burnsville High School, a suburb of Minneapolis,^[16]after the af2 season ends. Rickey Foggie lives in Minneapolis, during the offseason.^[17]

[edit] References