Ryan Johanningmeier, a former standout offensive lineman for the University of Colorado, died on Monday. He was 38.
The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office told The Denver Post that his family went to check on him at his Lakewood apartment and found him dead. Foul play is not suspected.
The coroner’s office completed an autopsy but could not determine the cause of his death, which is believed to have occurred before he was leaving for work, said his mother, Sandy Curfman. Johanningmeier had an enlarged heart and high blood pressure, but toxicology tests will take another six to eight weeks to complete, his mother said.
The university will hold a public memorial service at 1 p.m. on March 21 at the East Stadium Club at Folsom Field in Boulder.
Johanningmeier had a short NFL career after signing with the Atlanta Falcons as a free agent in 2000. Neck and back injuries ended his career a year later.
“He had a great sense of humor,” Curfman told The Post. “You could not get a Reader’s Digest version of anything from Ryan. If Ryan saw it, he recounted it in every detail. We’d have to say to him, ‘Ry, we just need the basics.’
“He was bright, he was funny. I’m not sure Ryan would know the kind of outpouring we’ve had in the last 48 hours.”
Johanningmeier (pronounced Joe-HAN-ing-mye-er) was a versatile player, appearing in 44 games for CU while starting at three positions: offensive tackle, guard and center from 1996-99. During the 1998 season, he started at all three positions.
“Ryan was one of those players who never gave it anything less than his best effort, in practice, in games and off the field,” former CU coach Rick Neuheisel said in a statement. “A lot of players would have been apprehensive about moving around from position to position as much as he did, but he embraced it with a positive attitude and played all of them well. For him to pass at such a young age is nothing short of tragic.”
Ryan Joseph Johanningmeier was born Jan. 22, 1977, in Fort Collins to Curfman and B.J. Johanningmeier, who played football at Colorado State and spent three years in the NFL playing for Green Bay and Denver.
“When he was in Little League, he either hit a home run or struck out,” his father said. “That’s who he was. He had a lot of purpose in his life, and he wasn’t happy until he accomplished that purpose. He was an all-or-nothing person.”
Ryan graduated from Centaurus High School in Lafayette in 1995, where he participated in club volleyball and played football on both sides of the ball.
“He had the ability to be real serious when it came to practice, games and preparation, but at the same time … he’d make a group of people laugh. He’d make me laugh,” said Phil Bravo, Johanningmeier’s football coach at Centaurus and now coach at Monarch. “He knew how to turn that off and on.
“He was just off-the-scale intelligent. Just an incredible thinker. Just a bright, bright young man with a sense of humor that would knock your socks off.”
Named first-team all-Colorado by The Post in 1993 and 1994, he committed to play at CU for Bill McCartney to start the 1995 season but ended up playing his first year for Neuheisel after McCartney’s surprise retirement.
“We probably knew he was going to be a good athlete when he was in elementary school; one of his gym teachers called and said there was a problem with Ryan,” Curfman recalled. “He said, ‘He’s not very patient with everyone else who doesn’t get it as soon as he has.'”
He started on the Buffs’ offensive line from 1997-99 and played in nine games in 1996, including six at tight end, after redshirting in 1995. He played on four bowl champion teams: the 1996 Cotton Bowl, 1996 Holiday Bowl, 1998 Aloha Bowl and 1999 Insight.com Bowl. He earned first-team Big 12 honors in 1999 and was a second-team selection in 1998 and a third-team pick in 1997. In 1999, he won the Hang Tough Award as the CU player who had overcome the most adversity.
He was graduated in December 1999 a degree in business.
“Football is what I do,” Johanningmeier once said. “It’s not who I am.”
His history of injuries kept him from getting drafted into the NFL. He had undergone a combined five surgeries on his wrist, knee and shoulder by the end of his college career.
“He’s very inquisitive,” Dave Dunn, a partner of agent Leigh Steinberg’s, said of Johanningmeier in 2000. “I think he’s the first person who’s taken notes in an initial discussion since Steve Young. He asked the right questions.”
Atlanta signed him as a free agent. In September 2000, a doctor removed part of a herniated disc in Johanningmeier’s back. He never played a game for the Falcons in the two years — 2000 and 2001 — on the team’s payroll.
“When one disc goes, it’s like dominoes,” his mother recalled. “Every single day he was consumed with pain.”
After retiring from football he struggled with serious health issues resulting from his years playing football.
When he was little, he pulled apart electronics and then put them back together, his mother said, a harbinger, perhaps, of his decision to start his own IT business after the NFL, installing software, offering technology support and building computers in the Denver metro area. He stayed in touch with the Buffs, working briefly as a spotter for CU football games on 850 KOA radio.
He returned to CU to pursue a Master of Public Administration and also interned for Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman in the Denver metro area.
“I’m so sorry to hear that Ryan passed away,” Coffman wrote in a statement to The Post. “He was an extraordinary young man. I got to know Ryan right after he had to give up playing professional football. He was always very positive and accepted the fact that he had to find something else to be passionate about. … I always enjoyed talking to him about what it was like to play football professionally. My heart goes out to his family.”
His father said Johanningmeier eventually wanted to get into government, working either with computers or doing digital forensics work for the FBI.
Johanningmeier is survived by his parents and his stepparents, Jim Curfman and Debby Johanningmeier.
Denver Post writers Jesse Paul and Mark K. Matthews contributed to this report.
Daniel Petty: 303-954-1081, dpetty@denverpost.com or
