As a 32-year-old cornerback for the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts, former Duck Kenny Wheaton admits he’s close to the end of his 10-year professional football career.
Few Oregon fans can forget the play that launched it.
“The Pick,” Wheaton’s 97-yard interception return for a touchdown against then-No. 9 Washington in 1994, is just as relevant to Ducks fans now as it was on that day, Oct. 22, 1994. Accompanied by Jerry Allen’s famous call – “Kenny Wheaton’s gonna score!” – the play is still considered the defining play of the 1994 Rose Bowl season, and is featured on Oregon’s DuckVision before each home game.
“It was not only an amazing individual play for Kenny Wheaton, but it’s become the signature play of that season because that not only secured a great victory over Washington but it propelled and motivated that team for future success as well,” Danny O’Neil, the Ducks’ quarterback at the time, said.
Count Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Damon Huard, who threw the interception, as one who would like to forget it.
“It was a terrible throw, I threw out late in the flat and I guess more than anything I wish I had made a tackle on a guy,” Huard said. “For Oregon fans … they tend to think that was the play that turned their program around.”
Like it or not, “The Pick” has immortalized Wheaton as a 19-year-old redshirt freshman. Even if people don’t know Wheaton, they know the play.
“It means a lot to me knowing that I was a part of changing history for an entire university,” said Wheaton. “I’ve said it before, I just happened to be the guy on that play with the ball on my hands,” Wheaton said, during a call from Dallas, Texas.
When Wheaton was recruited to Oregon by current University of Kentucky head coach Rich Brooks and current defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti, the Oregon-Washington rivalry was a lopsided one. The Huskies won the national championship in 1991, while the Ducks were still in a rebuilding mode.
The 1994 win has changed the nature of the rivalry, however. Though the Huskies lead the overall series 58-35-5, Oregon has prevailed in seven of the last 11 games.
“Certainly there is no love lost between those two schools and it has become a great rivalry,” Huard said.
Wheaton’s story, both professionally and personally, goes well beyond “The Pick,” however. He left Oregon in 1997 after his junior season, opting to cut his highly-decorated college career short for the NFL draft, where he was a third round pick by the Dallas Cowboys. Injuries haunted his three-year tenure with the club, though, allowing him to play in only 22 games. It was in 1999 that Wheaton reached a crossroads of his career in the form of a serious knee injury.
“I literally, truly sat on the couch for two years. It took me 22 months to even jog on that knee,” recalled Wheaton. “It hurt me that bad to think that my career could be over as soon as it got started. I sat around the house, I cried, I prayed and I kept believing that one day if I could get a chance, I could play again.”
Wheaton recovered, but getting his chance was just as frustrating. After signing with the Detroit Fury of the Arena Football League and playing nine games in 2002, he was traded to the AFL’s expansion Colorado Crush organization in 2003, but was cut at the team’s training camp.
Four months later, Wheaton found his way to the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts, his current team.
In his first three seasons with the Argos, Wheaton averaged more than 68 tackles per season. In the 2004 playoffs, Wheaton established a CFL record when – what else – he returned an interception 116 yards for a touchdown. Toronto would go on to win the Grey Cup, the CFL’s equivalent of the Super Bowl, that season. And two seasons ago he was named an East Division all-star for the first time in his career.
“I had to get knocked down to get back up,” said Wheaton.
Wheaton has also become a fixture in several off the field youth causes, as well. The Argonauts’ “Stop the Violence” campaign to curb youth violence in Toronto has seen Wheaton be one of its biggest supporters, due in part to the “senseless” murder Wheaton’s brother, Derrick, several years ago.
After Wheaton retires, he plans to return to his hometown of Phoenix, Ariz., focusing on the development of the group home for teenagers that he and his brother Robert established five months ago. The home, which currently houses four teens, ages 12 to 18, was inspired by a visit Wheaton paid to a junior high school a few years before when a homeless girl approached him, and asked if she could live with him and his family.
“I said ‘What’s wrong with your home?’ And she said she didn’t have a home. I’m looking at this kid and my heart is just ripping to pieces,” Wheaton said.
Wheaton figures to concentrate on the youth home in retirement, but also wants to start coaching – and wouldn’t mind being on the Oregon sideline once again.
“If there’s ever a position open at the U of O I’d love to come back and coach there.”
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