Fun Fact- Sam Darnold's Grandfather Is Former "Marlboro Man Cowboy" Dick Hammer
LA Daily News - Dick Hammer decided he would learn to ride a unicycle. The next day, he was riding around, no problem, with his niece Nancy perched on his shoulders.
Sam Darnold, although he lived in Capistrano Beach, had never played beach volleyball before. One day he and his sister Franki entered a tournament, against teams that had competed regionally. The Darnolds nearly won.
Dick Hammer was swimming in the USC pool one day. The varsity coach saw him churn and immediately asked him to join the team.
Sam Darnold was told he had to lose 10 pounds to play youth football. “I’m not going to ask my 11-year-old to do that,” his mother Chris said. Sam found another league. Besides, he had always been comfortable playing against his elders.
He still is.
Dick Hammer’s grandson is a 19-year-old quarterback who lost his first start, at Utah, and won his next eight.
So, I'm sure USC grads/fans, and miserable Jets fans already know this. But last night I learned that Sam Darnold’s grandfather’s name was Dick Hammer.
Let that marinate for a second.
Not “Richard.” Not “Dick, but he goes by Rich.” Not “Mr. Hammer.” Just Dick Hammer. The kind of name that doesn’t belong on a birth certificate so much as it belongs stitched across the back of a leather jacket right before the opening credits of an 80s action movie.
And the absolute best part is the name fits the résumé.
Because Dick Hammer apparently woke up every day like, “What new talent should I casually pick up and learn to dominate before lunch?”
Hammer played on USC’s Final Four basketball team in 1954. The Trojans haven’t been back since. Hammer averaged 7.1 points and four rebounds for a 19-14 squad that beat Santa Clara by one point in the regional but lost a late 7-point lead to Bradley in the NCAA semifinals.
He played on the U.S. Olympic volleyball team at the 1964 Olympics, along with a UCLA basketball player named Keith Erickson.
He held school javelin and decathlon records at Fullerton Junior College.
He became a firefighter and was the captain of the unit at Universal Studios. A commercial producer needed someone to put on a red hat and slide down a pole. Hammer was the man, and he made a commercial for Aunt Jemima pancakes, and that led to a career as the square-jawed, intense fellow in a cowboy hat, known as the Marlboro Man.
If you remember the TV series “Emergency!”, there was a fireman named Dick Hammer. Played by one and the same.
Hammer played on USC’s Final Four basketball team in 1954. The Trojans haven’t been back since.
He also made the U.S. Olympic volleyball team at the 1964 Olympics.
Basketball Final Four guy and Olympic volleyball guy. That’s already more than enough for any one person. That’s a full life.
That’s the fuckin peak.
On top of all that, he also held school javelin and decathlon records at Fullerton Junior College.
So he was also a track-and-field monster.
According to his widow Betty and the Darnolds, he was basically allergic to self-celebration. The guy had too much talent for one person and still didn’t want the attention. "If you started praising him, he would change the subject and start asking about you."
Talk about good old fashioned old-school, All-American wiring.
As if the sports stuff wasn’t enough, he became a firefighter and ended up captain of the unit at Universal Studios. Then a commercial producer needed someone to put on a red hat and slide down a pole for an Aunt Jemima pancakes commercial.
And the producer looked around and said, “Get me the most square-jawed, sexy guy in the building.”
Naturally, that was the Dick Hammer.
That led to him becoming the Marlboro Man. Billboards. TV. The whole deal. Betty said she saw his face on a massive Sunset Boulevard billboard and almost crashed her car.
What a quote.
Later, as the reality of lung cancer deaths mounted, Dick grew less proud of the Marlboro connection. He dealt with prostate cancer later on and died in 1999 at 69. Sam was 2. Which is brutal, because you know Dick Hammer would have absolutely loved watching Sam turn into a quarterback
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The coolest part about reading about Dick Hammer is that he wasn’t just built like a superhero, he acted like one too.
He was a fireman during the Watts riots in 1965 and during Malibu wildfires. Worked 24 on, 24 off, and still volunteered as a substitute teacher.
He liked working with special-needs kids. He’d memorize the seating chart beforehand so he could call kids out by name the second he walked in, because he understood how much it meant to the kids to be known by their name and given attention.
He made sure every girl in his class knew how to throw a softball properly ahead of the Presidential Fitness Test. (Talk about a dad move applied to an entire classroom.)
This guy sounded like he was the absolute fucking man.
A dying, or dead breed for sure.
And if you want the single best Dick Hammer story, I got you. It’s this one from Al Scates, the UCLA coach who won 19 NCAA titles.
"They had an honor rule in volleyball back then. If you touched the ball and the ref mistakenly gave you the point, you had to admit it.
So Dick Hammer touches the ball on game point in a final, the ref awards his team the win, everyone starts celebrating, and Dick Hammer stands there with his hand up like a substitute teacher trying to restore order. He says the point shouldn’t count.
The refs reverse it. His team ends up losing.
That is so insane it loops back around to being inspirational.
That is the epitome of integrity. That’s a man who would rather lose the biggest point of the match than win the wrong way. In 2026, people would call that “content” and try to monetize it. Dick Hammer just called it Tuesday.
p.s.- It’s also pretty crazy to think the Jets basically derailed Darnold’s development so badly that for a minute there he was flirting with the “almost out of the league” zone. Then he winds up in Minnesota, lands in Kevin O’Connell’s QB-friendly lab, and suddenly he’s back to looking like the guy everyone swore they drafted in the top five. And now the whole thing has gone full American sports-movie. He’s in Seattle, he’s leading a top-seeded Seahawks team, and he’s playing this weekend with a straight-up trip to the Super Bowl on the line.A comeback story you honestly love to see, because for a dude with Dick Hammer DNA running through his veins, it just felt wrong that he wasn’t playing high-caliber football somewhere.