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Former NFL quarterback Jeff Komlo had everything—money, a doting family, a mansion in Bryn Mawr. It all came apart on the Main Line, and it ended in the wreckage of a car accident in Greece. What follows is Komlo’s tragic story as it should be told, from those who knew him best.
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“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” —St. Matthew
He was born in Cheverley, Md., on July 30, 1956. You could argue, however, that the life of William “Jeff” Komlo really began at Franklin Field on Oct. 2, 1976. The surface of the old ballpark was slick from a steady rain, and most of the 15,851 in attendance were huddled in its dampened bowels until kick-off. The Temple Owls were coming into the game with a 2-2 record and showcasing a bona-fide NFL prospect named Joe Klecko.
On the visiting side, the University of Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens were out to revenge a 45-0 loss to Temple the year before. Earlier in the week, Delaware head coach Harold R. “Tubby” Raymond had made the decision to start the sophomore Komlo at quarterback. Given that he’d only gotten a spot look in a loss the week before, he was a long shot.
In a life that seemed spun from juxtaposition and irony, it was perhaps fitting that the formal introduction of Komlo occurred in Philadelphia at one of the most storied football stadiums in America—and just miles from where his life would eventually unravel and show itself, unmercifully, to the Main Line community in which he lived. For the first 40 years of his life, Komlo’s story was chiseled from the bedrock beliefs in hard work and dedication he was raised on. And it continued, after a career in football, with accumulated wealth, a beautiful family and a 7,000-square-foot home in Bryn Mawr.
Komlo had been anointed with success at an early age, and he spent the rest of his life chasing after it with mind-blowing intensity. Everyone around him knew he was going too damn fast—everyone, it seems, but him.
The former NFL quarterback’s last 12 years were a tangle of police blotters, accusations, grief and, finally, disappearance. It all ended on March 14, 2009, when Komlo died at age 52 from injuries sustained in a car accident in Greece, where he’d lived the last four years of his life as a fugitive from justice.
This is a story of a man who had—and lost—everything.
Jeff Komlo had arrived at the University of Delaware as a walk-on the year before from DeMatha Catholic High School in Maryland by way of Fork Union Military Academy in Virginia. His performance on the freshman team put him at No. 4 on the QB depth chart, and his coach openly questioned Komlo’s dedication to football.
“I told his father that his son was a poor leader, and I needed a quarterback who the team would rally around,” Tubby Raymond recalls. “Jeff thought he was better than all his coaches thought he was, but the truth was that he hadn’t distinguished himself.”
In the summer that would change his life, Komlo returned to College Park and worked from 7 to 4 for the Transit Rail System in nearby Washington, D.C. When he wasn’t on the job, he ran up and down the steps of the empty Byrd Stadium at the University of Maryland, a Hail Mary pass away from his home.
