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Behind the scenes with the 1987 Rose Bowl team: Part 1, Camp Tontozona

Every championship has an origin story. For Arizona State’s only Rose Bowl champion, it began long before New Year’s Day in Pasadena. It began at Camp Tontozona, where competition, discomfort and camaraderie forged a team that would make history.

Behind the scenes with the 1987 Rose Bowl team: Part 1, Camp TontozonaBehind the scenes with the 1987 Rose Bowl team: Part 1, Camp Tontozona
Sun Devil Athletics

The 1986 Sun Devil Football team runs out of the tunnel in Pasadena on New Year’s Day, where they defeated Michigan for Arizona State’s first and only Rose Bowl victory in school history.

On New Year’s Day in 1987, the Sun Devil Football team solidified its place in Arizona State history.

Behind a 22-15 come-from-behind victory over Michigan, the 1986 Sun Devils captured the first, and only, Rose Bowl championship in school history.

But that historic team wasn’t built in Tempe alone.

Its foundation was laid in the pines of Payson, Arizona, at Frank Kush’s legendary Camp Tontozona, which he established in 1959. 

Also known as Camp T, the mountain retreat is a world away from campus. Players trade modern comforts for cabins, grass practice fields and long days of hard work and intense competition.

As quarterback Jeff Van Raaphorst puts it, “Anytime you put a group of people in an uncomfortable situation with a common objective, it has a chance to develop camaraderie and trust.”

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On the 40th anniversary of that historic Rose Bowl championship season, the members of the 1986 Sun Devil Football team still point to Camp T as where their championship journey truly began.

Camp Tontozona lore
Every Sun Devil team has its own Camp Tontozona stories, and the 1986 team has plenty of lore to add to the camp’s rich history.

“It reminded me of a sixth-grade camp,” Hall of Fame cornerback Eric Allen recalled.

“I was thinking ’Oh man, this is going to be awesome,’” he laughed.

“That lasted about a day. After that, you knew this was the real deal. It was just a tremendous competition.”

That competition went even further than just earning playing time and respect.  

“My freshman year as a tight end, we all had to put in five bucks in a pot, and that was a lot of money for me,” Randall McDaniel, another Hall of Famer, said.  

“Then we had to run down to the end of the road and back. I didn’t have a lot of money back then, even at the best of times, so I was not going to lose my money to anyone.”

That’s when his high school track background came in handy.

“I knew I could out-sprint those guys, so I just ran fast enough to stay ahead, and then I would run a little faster to get further ahead. I just made sure I stayed in front. So I got my money back, and I was happy with that.” 

Jeff van Raaphorst.png

Roughing it
Competition wasn’t the only challenge awaiting players in the mountains.

“But the bugs, man,” Van Raaphorst joked.

“Some of the guys have never seen bugs,” he added. “To see a 230-pound guy standing on a chair because of a tarantula or something, you just kind of shake your head and go, ‘okay, we’re going to we’re going to be in real trouble when it gets to game time.’”

While Van Raaphorst was focused on wildlife, Allen focused on wild hair. 

“There was no barber, which was hilarious,” he said with a laugh. “That was kind of like the thing, like, ‘hey man, I didn’t know you had your hair turned red when it got longer.”

It’s those stories that you can’t tell that are the ones that brought us all close together.

Randall McDaniel

For Director of Operations Dave Boller, who was more focused on the work happening behind the scenes, camp wasn’t exactly a vacation either.

“Yeah, it was no Marriott hotel. It’s camping at its worst,” noted Director of Operations Dave Boller. “Probably to this day, that’s why I never want to go camping.”

“And then of course you have the bathrooms,” Boller added. "You’ve got 100 men in there, so there were tons of jobs with the plumbing."

Among bathroom duty, laundry and classroom prep, his responsibilities also included preparing the practice fields.

“There were still cows getting on the field back then, and you had to clean that up.”

Van Raaphorst, meanwhile, remembers the team pitching in with the practice field. 

“We didn’t have a turf field, right? So if it rained, you had to run down there and roll the tarp out. We just kind of dealt with playing in mud, and it rained a lot of it up there.” 

Randall McDaniel with nametag

Sweet dreams
With so much packed into each day, two or three practices a day, meetings, meals, recovery and more, sleep was precious and sometimes hard to come by. 

“When one of the guys would get up at 6 in the morning to go running, I’d be throwing things at him because we weren’t going to bed until 11 or midnight," said Boller. “Go run during the day,”

McDaniel, meanwhile, would voluntarily get up at 6 a.m. not to run, but to cheer on his best friend, linebacker Darin Tupper, as he ran extra for the extra conditioning.

Living in cramped cabins wasn’t always easy, but sharing those spaces taught lessons that extended beyond football.

“It was kind of horrible as I think of now,” said Allen. “Some people wake up early, but it was just getting used to having this communal area and having the proper respect for it. Eventually, you know, things worked out.”

Unplugged and unified
Camp T also lacked one thing modern-day college student-athletes take for granted: Constant connection. There was no internet, no cell phones. They only had each other … and one pay phone that Boller eventually got rid of. 

“Man, normal college kids would die,” laughed Boller. “I’d love to see the looks on their faces. There was no communication with the outside world.”

Therefore, players had little choice but to spend time together.

“We were unplugged completely, and players were forced to really interact with each other,” said Van Raaphorst. “I believe our friendships evolved because there weren’t cell phones. We’re all thrown into an extremely uncomfortable situation, several days in cabins, on a muddy grass field.”

He believes those shared experiences became one of the team’s greatest strengths.

“I think anytime you get a group of people and put them in an uncomfortable situation with a common objective, it has a chance to really develop camaraderie and trust.”

But the best bonding experiences will forever remain between the teammates themselves. 

“It’s those stories that you can’t tell that are the ones that brought us all close together,” McDaniel laughed. “I mean, that stupid stuff that we did, I will say that’s one thing I love most.”

We all knew this was the year that we could do something big.

Randall McDaniel

“Something was different”
By the start of the 1986 season, many of the players had spent years together. Some had even been teammates in high school, giving the group a level of familiarity that few teams get to enjoy. 

“The more time you spend together, the better friends you become and then the more wins you produce,” said Allen. 

McDaniel sensed something special about this group almost immediately.

“The Rose Bowl year, it was the same excitement as always, but something was different. I mean, we all knew this was the year that we could do something big.” 

For Allen, camp revealed something even more important.

“We came from different parts of the country, but a lot of our stories are similar. Our coaches were trying to get us to the same point, and I think that’s what bonded us together. There’s nothing like it.”

Before Arizona State made football history, upsetting Michigan in Pasadena, the 1986 Sun Devils first became a championship team at Camp Tontozona.

Four decades later, the friendships built there remain as strong as ever.

“That group from those days, we’re still close,” said McDaniel. “There’s a group of us that still gets together, and that’s what I loved about playing back then.” 

“It all started with camp.”

Next: Part 2 of Behind the scenes with the 1987 Rose Bowl team, where we’ll explore the team’s underdog mentality and the motivation that fueled its historic run.