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CANTON, Ohio - Maybe it's just Steve Young's fate to forever be the "other" quarterback, the perpetual Al Gore to a lifelong series of attention-grabbing Bill Clintons.
He took over LaVell Edwards' offense at Brigham Young only after the charismatic Jim McMahon had set dozens of national passing records. He waited four years on the Candlestick Park sidelines while Joe Montana burnished his "best-ever" legend.
And Sunday, when his career was finally immortalized with his entry into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Young stood in a stadium dominated by the tens of thousands of teal-and-orange-clad Dolphins fans who came to cheer fellow inductee Dan Marino.
"I feel a little bad for him. It's about 50-to-1 Marino jerseys out here," said Tom Simonella of Southbury, Conn., who drove eight hours to wear Young's No. 8 and witness his enshrinement. "The Niners are definitely outnumbered."
Not that Young minded. "I just feel privileged to be going in alongside a quarterback like Dan Marino," Young said. "He's one of the greatest passers ever."
Besides, there were still several hundred of his invited guests, all wearing matching 49er-maroon straw hats, seated near the podium, and they included some of the most important figures of his life.
Broncos coach Mike Shanahan, for instance, spent his training-camp off day flying to Canton to honor the quarterback who, while an assistant in San Francisco, he helped win Super Bowl XXIX. Edwards, too, was there to witness the first BYU player enshrined in pro football's pantheon. So was Bill Walsh, the 49ers coach who, Young said, "believed in a scrambling lefty - thanks, Bill." Dozens of former teammates, from San Francisco, BYU and even his boyhood home of Greenwich, Conn., dotted the crowd.
And sitting up front was his proud mother, Sherry - considerably calmer, Young said, than during his first season in the sport.
"My mom charged the field when I was 8 years old," Young related. "She was upset that another kid had neck-tackled me and knocked the wind out of me. It was supposed to be illegal, but no penalty was called, so she felt it imperative to rush the field and helped her boy.
"Imagine the visual: Late 1960s, a 20s-age woman, in a dress, purse on her shoulder, big sunglasses, high-heeled shoes aerating the field. She grabbed the kid on the other team, picked him up by the shoulder pads and told him he better not do it again," Young said to loud laughter. "Mom, now you know why we never gave you any field-level tickets."
While a few hundred fans made the pilgrimage from San Francisco, there were a handful with Utah connections, too. Linda Curtis, a former Utahn now living in Charlotte, N.C., wore a vintage royal-blue BYU jersey with Young's No. 8 as she filed into Fawcett Stadium with her husband Jack and 8-year-old son Wesley.
"I love Steve Young. I loved to watch him play because he would do whatever was necessary to win," Curtis said. "If he needed to run, he ran. If he needed to pass, he passed."
And off the field, he was just as great, Curtis said. When Wesley was hospitalized five years ago, Young made time on a trip to Charlotte to visit him. "We've loved him since BYU, but we really loved him after that," Curtis said.
Young loved his BYU days, too, he said, even though being the great-great-great grandson of the school's namesake didn't guarantee him a spot on the football team. "I was just talking to LaVell a minute ago," Young joked before the ceremony, "and he said, 'It's amazing that you came to college not knowing how to throw a football.' "
He learned well, with the help of some of football's most revered coaches, each of them with a different philosophy and message. Sid Gillman, an AFL innovator who worked with Young while with the USFL's L.A. Express, for instance, "taught me that playing quarterback is an art form," Young said. "He used to say, 'This is not a game. It's a canvas, and you are Michelangelo.' "
But if that lesson resonated with the new Hall of Famer, so did one from Steve Mariucci, coach of the 49ers when Young finally retired in 1999. It's a philosophy seconded on Sunday by the Steve Young fans in Canton, outnumbered though they may have been.
"Mooch was always yelling, 'Is this fun or what?' " Young said.
"Yes, it was."
STEVE YOUNG
Stats
* Games: 169
* Rushing yards: 4,239
* Rushing TDs: 43
* Passing yards: 33,124
* Passing TDs: 232
Records
* Young's 2,667 completions rank 17th all-time, as do his 232 passing touchdowns.
* His six NFL passing titles tie him with Sammy Baugh for the most ever.
* Young's four consecutive seasons leading the league in passing, from 1991-94, are the most all-time by two seasons.
* Has six of NFL's 13 seasons with a passer rating over 100, including a then-NFL-best 112.8 in 1994.
* His all-time passer rating of 96.8 is the best, just ahead of Kurt Warner and Daunte Culpepper.
On the ground
How Steve Young's rushing game compares with the best running quarterbacks of then and now:
Yards TD
Steve Young 4,239 43
R. Cunningham 4,928 35
Fran Tarkenton 3,674 32
Steve McNair 3,312 35
Tobin Rote 3,128 37
Michael Vick 2,234 13