The Wrong Turn

"In the woods."

She spun around but couldn't see him. In fact, she would never lay eyes on him again. Neither would Komlo's parents, his three siblings, his four daughters, his ex-wife or his former football teammates. A warrant for his arrest would be issued on grounds of arson, the last in a string of charges that included cocaine possession, DUI and domestic violence. But by then he would be gone, his whereabouts unknown, the latest act in a disintegration that was as spectacular as it was mystifying.

A few years earlier Komlo had been living on Philadelphia's affluent Main Line, an ex-jock who had replicated his athletic success in business. Two decades before that, he had been a starting quarterback for the Detroit Lions. Now he was on the run.

In the fall of 1975, Jeff Komlo strutted onto the Delaware campus in Newark. He stood 6'4", had a strong, well-proportioned body and had excelled at every sport he'd tried. At DeMatha High, the Catholic sports powerhouse in Hyattsville, Md., Komlo had been the star shortstop and cleanup hitter. But his father, William, had played football at Maryland in the 1950s, and Jeff, who had been a starter on DeMatha's team, was determined to become a college quarterback. When he wasn't recruited out of high school, he took a postgraduate year at Fork Union (Va.) Military Academy to improve his skills. Finally the coach at Delaware expressed interest. "I can't give you a scholarship," Tubby Raymond told Komlo. "You're going to have to make the team as a walk-on."

"O.K.," Komlo replied, "then that's what I'll do."

He didn't get many snaps on the freshman team, but that did little to dampen his spirits. He just woke up earlier and worked harder. On school breaks he went home to College Park, Md., and jumped rope for so long that his parents feared he would drop dead from a heart attack. Then he ran for miles around the neighboring horse country.

As a sophomore Komlo surpassed the other Delaware quarterbacks and won the starting job and eventually a scholarship. Coaches remember that William Komlo, an insurance salesman and thoroughbred horse breeder, would sit quietly in the bleachers during practice, nodding when his son made the right plays. Jeff didn't have the strongest arm or the greatest accuracy or mobility, but he radiated confidence. He was Steve McQueen in the pocket, a natural-born leader. "There was just this air, this presence Jeff put forward," recalls Ted Kempski, then the Blue Hens' offensive coordinator. "All the coaches thought the same thing: This guy's got it."

Handsome and personable, Komlo was the classic Big Man on Campus. He was seldom without a girl on his arm. The professors all knew him. He and his roommate and favorite receiver, Peter Bistrian, would tool around Newark in a yellow Corvette, music blaring. "He was larger than life," says teammate K.C. Keeler, now the football coach at Delaware. "We were in the same locker room, but you didn't even know if you should address him, or how."

Komlo got better each year. As a senior he was a Division II All-America and led the Blue Hens to the national championship game. In three seasons he passed for 5,256 yards, set more than a dozen school passing records and laid the groundwork for Delaware's unexpected rise as an NFL quarterback factory. Komlo's backup, Scott Brunner, would end up playing for the Giants, Broncos and Cardinals. Rich Gannon, the Blue Hens' quarterback a decade after Komlo, would lead the Raiders to the Super Bowl in 2002. Most recently, of course, there was Joe Flacco, who led the Ravens to two playoff victories as an NFL rookie last season. "There's no doubt," says Raymond, the man after whom the Delaware football field is named, "Jeff Komlo did a lot to put this program on the map. You know what he had? An athlete's mentality."

Toward the end of his four years at Delaware, Komlo began dating Jennifer Aldrich, a pretty freshman from a prominent Philadelphia family. She saw up close the treatment accorded a star quarterback. "Jeff cut to the front of every line," she recalls. "He never paid for a beer. He had girls writing his papers. The local merchants would do his dry cleaning or make his travel arrangements for free. I guess it's like this everywhere: When you're the star quarterback, you're like a god."