Wandering but never wavering: Zach Kline's uncommon college football journey

The first time it happened, Zach Kline had been a college football player for four years and 11 months

By that point, He had worn jersey No. 8, No. 3, No. 5, No. 17 and No. 10.

He had been issued playbooks by six coaches at four schools, all of which he has kept.

“I’ve been a Bear, a Roadrunner, a Sycamore, a Bear again, and a Bulldog,” Kline said.

Yet in five years of college, no FBS or FCS coach had ever said to Kline the words Eric Kiesau told him on Friday, Nov. 18.

As Kline got in line to stretch for practice, Fresno State’s interim head coach said, “Hey, you’re starting this week,” Fresno State's interim head coach said during practice.

The desire to be a starting quarterback prompted Kline to leave the University of California after the 2013 season, Butte College after the 2014 season, Indiana State after the 2015 season and Cal again after the 2016 spring practice season.

At a time of year when hundreds of college football playing careers are coming to an end, Kline’s uninterrupted path through four programs at three levels over five years stands out as one of the most exceptional in the history of the sport. It also provides a reminder that no matter how preordained success may seem based on a recruit’s rating — Kline, with a big arm, was the No. 3 quarterback in the nation’s high school class of 2012, according to the 247Sports Composite — little in college football goes as planned.

The coach who signed Kline out of high school was gone after one season. The next coach ran a spread system rather than the pro style to which Kline was accustomed and chose a future No. 1 overall NFL draft pick to run it. Coaches at Indiana State and even Kline's final destination of Fresno State opted for promising underclassmen over Kline's potent arm.

Yet Kline, who finished his college career Nov. 26 after his second FBS start, is an example that with the right outlook, a series of setbacks might begin with tears of sadness but end with tears of joy.

“To a weaker man, many of the things that happened to Zach Kline would crush them,” said Ron Coccimiglio, Cal football’s director of career development and a friend before, during and after Kline’s time in Berkeley. “I think he would tell you he's a better man today for what he's gone through than if he hadn't had those challenges. Even if coaches keep telling Zach he's not their first choice, success has a way of finding those who persevere.”

Kline’s sister, Aly Kline McGue, remembers the letters from college football programs stacked three feet high by the phone in the kitchen of their mother’s home in Danville, Calif., six years ago.

Only one program really mattered to Kline, and that was the one located in nearby Berkeley and , one that was coached by Jeff Tedford. Kline’s parents went through an acrimonious divorce at the same time of his emergence as a national-caliber recruit, and though he saw a therapist during that period, it was Tedford who provided the most relatable ear. He committed to Tedford and the Bears at age 16, a year after his parents’ split.

“Really he was the father figure I needed in that time, and he fulfilled that role,” Kline said.

Kline enrolled early at Cal and welcomed a redshirt year to learn Tedford’s playbook, one he describes as a dense, NFL pro-style tome. But after that 2013 season, Tedford was fired and replaced by current Bears coach Sonny Dykes, who brought a prolific but different style of offense from Louisiana Tech.

The winter term also brought Jared Goff to campus.

Eight months later, Goff was named the starter, not Kline. Kline said he had never lost a position battle, and he asked himself how he would deal with it. “It was the first time going, ‘Hmm, this is supposed to work out, why isn't this working out?’ ” he said.

Kline’s father wanted him to leave Cal immediately, just before the 2013 season, but Coccimiglio advised him differently: “I told him, ‘You're in here, you made a commitment to be with these guys, and if Jared got hurt and we didn't have a quarterback, how would that look? Is that something that would bother you?’

“ 'Do the best you can and then evaluate it.' ”

Kline appeared in seven of the Bears’ 12 games, but after the season Cal offensive coordinator Tony Franklin told him Goff would remain Cal’s the starter and Kline could be the backup. Kline remembers telling Franklin, “My goal is to be a starting quarterback in college, and I want to play. I know I have the skills, so it's time for me to leave.”

Kline had made dozens of friendships at Cal and was well on his way to an English degree. Still, Coccimiglio said, “When he left, everybody understood.”

Kline enrolled at Butte College in tiny Oroville, Calif., about 80 miles north of Sacramento. It's where which had launched Aaron Rodgers and numerous other quarterbacks to FBS launched their careers. But Kline quickly realized the value of junior college was to focus on where he was, not where he was going. “The wheels started turning: Maybe I need to focus on a new way of doing things,” Kline said. “That was raw, bare bones football. I learned so much.”

It was at Butte where Kline found a mentor in Jon Hays, who had gone from Butte to the University of Utah as a player and was back in Oroville, Calif., coaching the quarterbacks. Hays taught Kline how to prepare himself for practices and games, how to study defenses, how a quarterback connects to a team in myriad ways.

The Butte experience stoked Kline with confidence as he accepted a full scholarship to play quarterback at Indiana State, which competed in the best conference in the FCS, had seen its senior quarterback graduate and was coached by Mike Sanford Sr., whom Kline really liked. But two trends continued during Kline’s time in Terre Haute, Ind.: Kline made dozens of friends — he’s hosted multiple Sycamores teammates in the Bay Area — and after a spring and summer of preparation, he was unable to win the starting quarterback job.

The Indiana State experience was made particularly difficult because, armed with the knowledge gained at Butte, Kline knew he had put in the necessary work to be the Sycamores’ starter. But Kline rarely played, finishing — he finished the season 6-for-13 passing for 47 yards and no touchdowns — not even late in games. “It was a hard situation,” Kline said, “because I’m like, ‘Wow, when I thought it couldn’t get worse, it got worse.’ ”

Isaac Harker, one of Kline’s best friends on the team, was the one taking the snaps. Kline cheered for him vociferously from the front of the sideline as Harker led a game-winning drive against Youngstown State in the Sycamores’ final game of the 2015 season.

“I couldn't be happier for him,” Kline said. “But, also in that moment I'm like, ‘Know what, I think God's telling me something.’ At the end of that year I had to come to the decision. I was just like, ‘OK, am I going to quit football? How much of this can I take?’ ”

Kline took stock of his life, pinpointing what was most important to him at that moment. He had the support of his longtime girlfriend Malia Mailes, his family and his growing roster of friends.

“I would venture to say that everyone he's come in contact with would stand on the table for Zach with anything that he's going to do,” said Tedford, who hosted Kline in camps at a young age and never lost touch. “I think his perspective on where football fits is ... some people it's for life. Right? But Zach has somehow figured out that football's a piece of it, that the relationships are more important and what he really thrives on.”

Many of those relationships, as well as a chance to complete a degree at one of the country's top universities, resided in Berkeley. So this past winter Kline moved in with his sister and her husband of four months, Clinton, in San Ramon, Calif., and re-enrolled at Cal. “It was 100% to get the degree,” Kline said. “I had no inclination to play football, zero.”

But Kline had reached out to his personal coach, Will Hewlett, before leaving Indiana State and told him, “I’m obviously not doing something right. I’m ready to be coached. I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

And once among former Cal teammates again, Kline felt an irresistible pull to the game. One night he got back to his sister’s house a little later than expected.

“Where were you?” she asked him.

“Oh, I was throwing at the quarterback place,” he said.

“Why were you doing that?” she asked.

“You know, just wanted to throw,” he said.

Within a matter of days, he emailed Franklin about joining the Cal football team as a walk-on, but Franklin declined Kline’s interest. Before the end of January, however, Franklin announced he was leaving Cal for a similar role at Middle Tennessee State.

Meanwhile Kline kept working toward his English degree on campus and working with Hewlett off campus.

I still have a year of eligibility left, Kline reasoned, so if I can put together some workout film, maybe there’s a school that would take me as a graduate transfer.

“We started working together 2-3 times a week and he just let go and let me coach him,” Hewlett said. “We transformed his entire delivery, how he moved in the pocket, everything that caused issues in his play on the field. It was positive for me and it was positive for Zach. He was more consistent, he had more control of his ball in terms of different speeds, and Zach can make any throw.”

And before spring practice, Bears wide receiver Patrick Worstell, Kline’s best friend since first grade, had a suggestion for him. “I had a gut feeling that he wasn’t done, that there was still some football left in Zach Kline,” Worstell said. “Eventually we had that conversation where I said, 'Why not go talk to coach Dykes about it, man?’ ”

Kline wore a tie the day he met Dykes in the middle of February. Another person with an appointment to meet Dykes, representing a sports video company, saw Kline and said, “Are you interviewing for a job?"

“Yeah, sort of,” Kline replied.

Before meeting with Dykes, Kline had it in his mind that any role with the team would be great, perhaps working with the equipment staff. During their talk, Dykes was warm and inviting. Kline was humble, saying his goal was to be a great teammate. Within minutes Dykes told him to get cleared by compliance, get a lifting time from strength coach Damon Harrington and join the team for workouts.

Kline could hardly believe it, and as he lined up with Cal’s third string at the start of spring practice on March 7, he told himself, “I’m going to put everything I have into this.”

And he did. By the close of spring drills he was getting reps with the first string and completed 15 of 16 passes for 202 yards and two touchdowns to Melquise Stovall in the Bears’ spring game. “I ended up having one of the best semesters of football I've probably ever had,” he said. “I was like, ‘This is crazy.’ A confidence-booster, really.”

Then, in early May, quarterback Davis Webb announced he would join Dykes and new offensive coordinator Jake Spavital at Cal as a graduate transfer. Webb had been coached by Kliff Kingsbury at Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas, in an offensive system with strong similarities to Cal’s. It was an ideal fit for everyone except perhaps Kline.

“I wasn’t mad at anybody,” he said. “I talked to the coaches and my dream still was, even after everything, I want to start. That’s what my goal still was, and I needed to go again.”

Fresno State appealed to Kline for a few reasons: It was nearby; it didn’t have a settled starting quarterback situation; and it employed two people he knew well in offensive coordinator Eric Kiesau, who had been Cal’s passing game coordinator during Kline’s high school recruitment, and wide receivers coach Burl Toler III, a former Cal standout who had joined the Bears’ coaching staff during Kline’s redshirt freshman season.

Kline decided that if he couldn’t win the starting job coming out of preseason drills, he would work his way into it. So he stayed in the coaches’ offices until 10:30 or 11 at night, did four times as much defensive study as was expected and watched three hours of film each Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. He considered it the ultimate compliment when a scout from the Cleveland Browns assumed he was a graduate assistant coach because of the odd hours he was keeping.

After eight games and a 1-7 record, Fresno State fired head coach Tim DeRuyter and promoted Kiesau to succeed him for the remainder of the season. Three games later came Kline’s first career FBS start, a 14-13 home loss to Hawaii, and he retained the role the following week, when the Bulldogs hosted San Jose State in their season finale on Nov. 26. In his two starts he completed 23 of 40 passes for 253 yards and a rushing touchdown.

Tedford was there to witness Kline's finale, having accepted the head coaching job at his alma mater during the Bulldogs' idle week on Nov. 10. And so were more than three dozen of members of Kline’s family, his girlfriend’s family, his brother-in-law’s family and friends.

Kline was in the tunnel for the pregame introductions of seniors, while his girlfriend, sister, brother-in-law, brother, mother and stepfather stood near the 50-yard line. He had his mind on the offensive game plan and the Spartans’ defensive scheme. And then he heard the public-address announcer say, “And your starting quarterback is Zach Kline.”

He ran out of the tunnel, and the tears ran down his face before he was out of the end zone. He hugged Kiesau. He hugged his girlfriend. He hugged his family.

“That was an emotionally charged moment,” his sister said. “My mom's doing great, I'm so proud of her. Zach runs up and he is bawling. Bawling, bawling, bawling. So much for keeping my mother in check, I can't keep my brother in check! Then we all started crying again because it was such a moment for him to start his last game.”

Coccimiglio and Hewlett and Worstell attribute Kline’s place on that field to Kline’s relentlessly positive outlook, ability to build relationships and throwing arm. Kline credits the five head coaches who went out of their way to help him find so many opportunities.

His sister credits her brother’s drive and determination to find a new plan every time one fell through.

“It's a really cool path,” she said. “Although he wouldn't choose the path if he was re-doing it, it's totally made him who he is.”