For O'Neil, Heaven Can't Wait : Football: Former Mater Dei and Oregon quarterback puts Bible studies at Calvary Chapel before an NFL tryout.

By CHRIS FOSTER

Aug. 26, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SANTA ANA — The telephone finally rang for Danny O’Neil. On the other end was the NFL.

Here was the last stop in his fantasy career--from Pop Warner star to Mater Dei quarterback to Oregon record setter and Rose Bowl co-MVP. And, now, a call from the Kansas City Chiefs.

It wasn’t a magnanimous offer. The Chiefs merely wanted a quick look before training camp opened. It was a long shot, to be sure. But it was an offer. The proverbial once-in-a-lifetime chance. A couple of crisp passes, and, who knows?

All O’Neil had to do when the call came in July was take some time off from his job as Calvary Chapel High’s youth pastor. He had that pinch-me-it’s-real feeling. Then he said no.

“They said, ‘We want you on Flight 322 out of Orange County tomorrow morning,’ ” O’Neil said. “It felt great. It was what I always wanted. Normally, I would have jumped on that plane . . . “

His emotions ran head on into a “but.”

”. . . What I’m doing right now, the NFL can’t match.”

O’Neil would not drop everything to chase football dreams. That time had past. Instead of flying east to audition, he stayed home to teach a Bible study class.

“I wanted to go, but I didn’t want to tell the kids, ‘I love you, but if the NFL calls, I’m gone,’ ” O’Neil said. “I told the Chiefs I had a commitment, but I could come the following day. I never heard from them again. That’s OK. My priorities had changed.”

So much so that he turned down the Chiefs one-time, limited offer.

“People start looking toward the future,” said Carl Peterson, the Chiefs’ president and general manager. “Certainly out of sight, out of mind is the situation here. But we respected his obligations.”

Those include teaching Bible study classes for Calvary Chapel High students on Wednesday and Friday nights. On Sundays, O’Neil teaches three more.

O’Neil will be Calvary Chapel’s offensive coordinator this season. On Monday, he installs an offensive scheme the team has not seen, let alone practiced. It will take a lot of faith to work through the glitches before the season opener in three weeks.

But faith is paramount with O’Neil.

The moment football ceased to dominate his life is still fresh in his mind. O’Neil’s rock bottom, as he calls it, didn’t come in the gutter, but in bed.

That day, he had thrown two touchdown passes and ran for another in a 40-14 victory over Washington State. In his first start, he outperformed future first-round pick Drew Bledsoe.

The party afterward was sweet. The restless night that followed was not.

“I had been on television the whole week,” O’Neil said. “People had been patting me on the back. I had just achieved everything I wanted and my life hadn’t changed. I lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling alone and empty.”

O’Neil had always considered himself a good Christian. He not only went to services at Calvary Chapel, but attended the school for eight years--from first through eighth grade.

What he realized that night in Oregon was football had too long controlled his actions. He said his center-of-attention spot as Mater Dei’s quarterback led him to alcohol and drugs, always seeking fulfillment. He continued the chase in Oregon.

“I was tricked into thinking I was going to find everything through football,” O’Neil said. “If I was the star football player, I’d find fulfillment. If I was a partyer, I’d find fulfillment. That wasn’t working, so I started taking drugs, maybe that would take away the emptiness. Still something was missing, so maybe I needed more girlfriends. I still wasn’t happy, so I had to be a college football player.

“It took me a long time to realize, nothing in this world is going to make me happy. I’d done all the drugs. I’d done all the alcohol. I had been a celebrity. I had signed autographs. I’d played on national TV. Nothing in this world had done it. I had to look out of this world to Jesus Christ.”

Said Calvary Chapel founder Chuck Smith: “Lots of kids have that first taste of freedom and want to see what the world has to offer. Danny made a real commitment to follow Jesus Christ. I always remember seeing him after games kneeling with teammates on the field, giving thanks.”

That sign of devotion led Smith to pick up the telephone last spring. O’Neil was waiting for a call back from British Columbia of the Canadian Football League.

“I was waiting to see if they were going to offer me a [better] contract,” O’Neil said. “Instead it was Chuck saying, ‘Do you want to take over our high school group?’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’ That’s the story of me being washed up at the age of 24.”

Actually, it was a retirement by mutual consent.

O’Neil spent draft day speaking at a church in Eugene, Ore. He lingered afterward, talking with kids and signing autographs. He was in no rush to get home.

There was no call coming. O’Neil had accepted the fact that he wasn’t going to be drafted, even if it still amazes former Oregon Coach Rich Brooks.

“He had accomplished so much at Oregon,” said Brooks, now the St. Louis Rams’ coach. “A number of scouts thought he was undersized [6 feet 2]. But he certainly showed that didn’t matter in college.”

O’Neil displayed his skills in the Rose Bowl in January. He had led the Ducks to their first Rose Bowl in 37 years, then set five game records.

O’Neil completed 41 of 61 passes for 456 yards in a 38-20 loss to Penn State. He shared MVP honors with the Nittany Lions’ Ki-Jana Carter, the No. 1 pick in the draft.

“It’s all just sinking in,” O’Neil said. “I used to read college football magazines and Oregon was never mentioned. Now I read, ‘Defending Pac-10 champion Oregon,’ and go, ‘wow.’ We were Pac-10 champions and went to the Rose Bowl. This is what I dreamed of doing my whole life.”

Those dreams, re-evaluated and reworked, were tested when the Chiefs called.

O’Neil already had turned down British Columbia. He said the money wasn’t right and the commitment wasn’t firm.

Besides . . .

“My lifetime dream wasn’t to play in the CFL,” O’Neil said.

The NFL was another matter.

Brooks said he considered bringing O’Neil to the Rams’ camp. He said he finally rejected the idea because the Rams already had Chris Miller, Mark Rypien and Tommy Maddox. The Chiefs were even more stocked with quarterbacks, but one, fourth-round draft pick Steve Stenstrom, was holding out.

“Frankly, we needed an arm to throw during a mini-camp,” Peterson said. “We liked what we saw of Danny in the Rose Bowl. We wanted him to come in for a mini camp.”

That, as it turned out, was impossible.

“Since I became a Christian, I’ve wanted to serve the Lord with the rest of my life,” O’Neil said. “But I thought that would be after a five-year NFL career, maybe a couple runs at the Super Bowl. Then I would get hurt or get cut or retire, then go into the ministry. Fortunately, I was able to speed up the process.”