Francis Asbury Tarkenton (born February 3, 1940), nicknamed "the Scrambler", is an American former professional football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 18 seasons, primarily with the Minnesota Vikings. He is widely regarded as the first great dual-threat quarterback in the NFL. He played college football for the Georgia Bulldogs, where he was recognized as a twice first-team All-SEC, and was selected by the Vikings in the third round of the 1961 NFL draft. After retiring from football in 1979, he became a media personality and computer software executive.
Tarkenton's tenure with the Vikings spanned thirteen non-consecutive seasons. He played for Minnesota for six seasons from 1961 to 1966 when he was traded to the New York Giants for five seasons, and then traded back to Minnesota for his last seven seasons from 1972 to 1978. At the time of his retirement, Tarkenton was the all-time NFL career leader in numerous records (including career passing touchdowns, yards, and completions). He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1986 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1987.
In addition to his football career, Tarkenton served as a commentator on Monday Night Football and a co-host of That's Incredible!. He also founded Tarkenton Software, a computer-program generator company, and he toured the U.S. promoting CASE (computer-aided software engineering) with Albert F. Case Jr. of Nastec Corporation. Tarkenton Software later merged with KnowledgeWare (with Tarkenton as president), until selling the company to Sterling Software in 1994.
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Early life and education
Tarkenton was born on February 3, 1940, in Richmond, Virginia. His father, Dallas Tarkenton, was a Methodist minister. He went to Athens High School in Athens, Georgia, and later attended the University of Georgia, where he was the quarterback on the Bulldog football team and a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.
Under head coach Wally Butts and with Tarkenton as quarterback, Georgia won the Southeastern Conference championship in 1959. Tarkenton was a first-team All-SEC selection in both 1959 and 1960.
Professional football career
The expansion Minnesota Vikings selected Tarkenton in the third round (29th overall) of the 1961 NFL draft, and he was picked in the fifth round of the AFL draft by the Boston Patriots. He signed with the Vikings. Tarkenton, 21, played his first NFL game in Sioux Falls, South Dakota against the Dallas Cowboys (and the Vikings' first ever game as an expansion team.) On September 17 against the Chicago Bears, he came off the bench to lead the Vikings to a 37–13 victory by passing for 250 yards and four touchdown passes and running for another. He was the only player in NFL history to pass for four touchdowns in his first NFL game until the feat was repeated by Marcus Mariota in the Tennessee Titans' 2015 season opener against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
He played for the Vikings from 1961 through 1966. His early years with the team were plagued by the trouble expected for a newly created team, with the Vikings winning a total of 10 games combined in their first three seasons, with Tarkenton winning eight of them. He threw 18 touchdowns and 17 interceptions for 1,997 yards in his first season. He rushed for 308 yards on 56 rushes for five touchdowns. The following year, he threw 22 touchdowns and 25 interceptions for 2,595 yards. He rushed for 361 yards on 41 rushes for two touchdowns.
Tarkenton did not get along with team coach Norm Van Brocklin, who did not like his penchant for scrambling. For the week 13 game against Atlanta in 1966, Van Brocklin went as far as benching Tarkenton to put in Bob Berry, a QB more to Van Brocklin's preferences (the Vikings proceeded to lose 20–14 to the 1-10 expansion team). Tarkenton soon demanded a trade. In February 1967, Van Brocklin announced his resignation. On March 7, 1967, Tarkenton was traded to the New York Giants for a first and second round pick in 1967, a first-round pick in 1968 and a second-round pick in 1969. In his first year with the Giants, Tarkenton passed for a then-career high 3,088 yards and a career high 29 touchdown passes en route to a 7–7 record, a huge improvement for a team that had finished 1-12-1 the year before. Tarkenton has stated that his 1967 season remains the highlight of his career. In the 1968 season, he helped lead the team to a 7–7 record. He passed for 2,555 yards, 21 touchdowns, and 12 interceptions to go with 57 carries for 301 rushing yards and three rushing touchdowns. In the first game of the 1969 season, the Giants played the Vikings. After trailing 23–10 in the fourth quarter, Tarkenton threw two touchdown passes to secure a 24–23 comeback victory over his former team. The 24 points allowed by Minnesota's defense were a season-worst for the unit, one more point than the Vikings allowed in losing Super Bowl IV to the Kansas City Chiefs in January.
Books
A biography of Tarkenton titled Better Scramble than Lose was published in 1969. This followed Tarkenton's 1967 autobiography No Time for Losing and preceded by several years his 1977 autobiography Tarkenton co-written with Jim Klobuchar. The autobiographies chronicle not only his football career but also his personal evolution from his early football days as a preacher's son. Tarkenton co-wrote with Brock Yates a book in 1971 titled Broken Patterns: The Education of a Quarterback, a chronicle of the 1970 New York Giants season.
In 1986, Tarkenton, with author Herb Resincow, wrote a novel titled Murder at the Super Bowl, the whodunit story of a football coach killed just before his team is to participate in the championship game.
Tarkenton wrote the self-help, motivational books Playing to Win in 1984, and How to Motivate People: The Team Strategy for Success in 1986. He also wrote the motivational self-help business book titled What Losing Taught Me About Winning, and Every Day is Game Day. In 1987, Tarkenton hosted a Think and Grow Rich TV infomercial that sold the book with an audio cassette version (the audio cassettes contained an introduction and conclusion by Tarkenton).
Business ventures and investments
Mark McCormack helped Tarkenton invest, making him wealthy enough to "retire this week if [he] wanted to", as New York magazine wrote in 1971. Tarkenton was a pioneer in computer software, and founder of Tarkenton Software, a program generator company. He toured the United States promoting CASE or "computer-aided software engineering" with Albert F. Case Jr. of Nastec Corporation, but ultimately merged his software firm with James Martin's KnowledgeWare, of which Tarkenton was president until selling the company to Sterling Software in 1994.
Tarkenton served as a color commentator on Monday Night Football from 1979 to 1982.
In 1999, Tarkenton was fined by federal regulators as part of a securities fraud sweep. According to the L.A. Times, "In Tarkenton's case, the Hall of Fame quarterback and 10 other former executives of his computer software and consulting firm, KnowledgeWare Inc., were accused of inflating by millions of dollars the company's earnings in reports for its fiscal year ended June 30, 1994. The former Minnesota Vikings quarterback agreed to pay a $100,000 fine and $54,187 in restitution. He did not admit any wrongdoing".
Since then, Tarkenton has been promoting various products and services including Tony Robbins and 1-800-BAR-NONE. He also founded GoSmallBiz, a small-business consulting website. He also operates an annuity marketing firm called Tarkenton Financial.
Politics
During the 2016 Republican National Convention, Tarkenton gave a speech endorsing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
NFL career statistics
Personal life
Tarkenton has been married twice and has four children.
His first marriage was to Anna Elaine Merrell of Decatur, Georgia. They wed on December 22, 1960, at First Baptist Church in Decatur, and divorced in March 1982. They had three children: daughter Angela, son Matthew, and daughter Melissa.
Tarkenton married his second wife, Linda Sebastian, in the mid-1980s. They have one daughter, Hayley Gray Tarkenton, a singer-songwriter.
Tarkenton once dated actress Ali MacGraw in the 1980s.