By Mike Vorel
The Seattle Times
Bob Schloredt won two Rose Bowls with one good eye.
Schloredt — a College Football Hall of Famer who quarterbacked the Washington Huskies from 1958 to 1960 — died Thursday at age 79, his family announced.
The Deadwood, S.D., native and Portland (Ore.) Greshman High alum most notably led UW to back-to-back Rose Bowl victories, defeating Wisconsin 44-8 to cap the 1959-60 season before upsetting No. 1 Minnesota 17-7 the following year. He was the first player to win most valuable player honors in a pair of Rose Bowl games. Schloredt went 15-2 as the Huskies’ starting quarterback from 1958 to 1960, despite the fact that a firecracker accident at age 7 left him legally blind in his left eye.
By the time he left UW, Schloredt — a 6-foot, 200-pound dual-threat signal caller — had amassed more rushing attempts (253) and yards (782) than any Husky quarterback in program history. The latter record stood until Dennis Fitzpatrick broke it in 1974. (Jake Locker now owns the school rushing record for a QB, with 1,939 rushing yards.)
“It was a helluva time — a great time to start a tradition at Washington,” Schloredt told The Times in 2015. “It was an experience and a half, I tell ya.”
Schloredt — who was born on Oct. 2, 1939 — was the first Husky player to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated, prominently featured in the Oct. 3, 1960 issue.
“The fact that he is a one-eyed quarterback on one of the best college teams in the country is a source of amazement to almost everybody but Schloredt himself,” Sports Illustrated’s Alfred Wright wrote at the time. “A number of distinguished ophthalmologists have tried to explain Schloredt’s skill at protecting himself against players approaching from his all-but-blind left side, and his ability to throw long and accurate passes without benefit of normal depth perception.
“Their explanations seldom have agreed and usually have been intelligible only to various other ophthalmologists.”
Schloredt earned Associated Press first-team All-America honors as a junior quarterback in 1959, while also leading the Husky defense with six interceptions that season.
After graduating from UW, Schloredt played two seasons for the BC Lions in the Canadian Football League. He later served as an assistant coach at UW under Jim Owens from 1963 to 1973, helping to recruit fellow Husky QB standout Sonny Sixkiller in 1969. Schloredt was inducted into the University of Washington Hall of Fame in 1981, the College Football Hall of Fame in 1989 and the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame in 1991.
Details on memorial services for Schloredt have yet to be announced.
