How Christian McCaffrey's grandfather from NJ blazed trail of family success to Super Bowl

Christian McCaffrey has reached the pinnacle of his sport for the first time in his decorated career.

The star running back for the San Francisco 49ers is one of the most recognizable players in Las Vegas for Super Bowl LVIII, and when MVP honors for the big game are doled out Sunday night, if his team wins, the odds are very good that McCaffrey will receive strong consideration.

Make no mistake: With all he has done, McCaffrey did not work this hard to get this far and finish second.

That sentiment actually runs in his family. The trailblazing patriarch who led the way and first shared that belief is a New Jersey legend once billed by Sports Illustrated as "Superman in spikes."

Dave Sime, McCaffrey's grandfather, was born in Paterson and raised in Fair Lawn. A world-class athlete, his exploits spread from the football fields and baseball diamonds of Bergen County to the Olympics track in Rome where, as a sprinter, he captured a silver medal in the 1960 Games.

Considered "the world's fastest human" throughout the 1950s, tying or breaking nine records in competition, Sime refused to hide the frustration and angst from the fact that his chase for a gold medal came up short.

"The sad part is I didn't go to Rome to get a silver medal," Sime told NorthJersey.com in a 2010 interview about his storybook life. "Things happen in sports. You move on. You get over it."

Sime later became a world-renowned eye surgeon whose patients at his South Florida practice included President Richard Nixon and baseball stars Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams. One of his patients was former Dolphins quarterback and two-time Super Bowl champion Bob Griese, who wound up introducing Sime to coaching legend Don Shula, with whom he became golfing buddies.

Sime (rhymes with rim) died in 2016 at age 79 as an esteemed Hall of Fame honoree at Fair Lawn High School and Duke University. He earned All-America honors in track and baseball at Duke, and spent a lifetime believing he should have won two gold medals as a sprinter if not for circumstances involving a fluke horseback-riding groin injury and a disputed disqualification for a baton exchange during a relay race.

"I call him, 'The Most Interesting Man in the World,'" Christian McCaffrey told Newsweek in 2015. "Dave just has so many stories."

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Lisa McCaffrey, Christian's mother, was one of three Sime children born to Dave and Betty. Their parents' divorce led to some familial discourse, ultimately putting a strain on how Christian's relationship with his grandfather manifested itself through the years.

Through a 49ers spokesperson, Christian McCaffrey declined an interview for this story last week.

The achievements of his grandfather speak for themselves.

"My dad had a baseball tryout with the New York Giants back in the day, and I remember stories he told me about being in center field with Willie Mays," Scott Sime, Dave's son and Christian's uncle, told NorthJersey.com in a phone interview Wednesday. "Sometimes it was hard to believe what he achieved, and at times they didn't feel real, even though they were. I remember my dad telling me that he was nervous, didn't know what to do, and he said Willie Mays told him, 'You do what I do.'"

Sime passed up 23 college football scholarships and he flirted with offers from professional baseball teams following an All-State baseball and football career at Fair Lawn High School. Vince Lombardi − yes, that Lombardi, whose name is on the trophy Christian is gunning for Sunday night − recruited Sime to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and he was heading there until officials discovered the aspiring pilot was color blind.

"[Sime] could just do everything," childhood friend Larry Speer told NorthJersey.com in 2010. They were standouts together on the Duke track team. "I've never seen an athlete with the natural athletic ability that Dave had. Whatever he did in sports, he just excelled at."

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Sime gave Christian the childhood nickname of “Snowball,” and his reasoning had everything to do with his play on the gridiron.

“He's not very big (5-foot-11, 210 pounds), and he starts off slow,” Sime told Newsweek. “But as he gets rolling downhill, he gets bigger and bigger, faster and faster."

From his days at Stanford to the Carolina Panthers and now the 49ers, the 27-year-old McCaffrey is the most talented and productive player at the position of his generation. He has put himself in the debate over the best running backs of all-time, a conversation that typically begins with Jim Brown, Barry Sanders, Emmitt Smith and Walter Payton.

McCaffrey is not there yet, but he is on a Hall of Fame track, for sure. And a victory at Allegiant Stadium on Sunday night would be his crowning milestone to date, raising his profile to another level.

"To have an opportunity to play in the Super Bowl is the biggest thing on the planet, and I think it's what this whole game is about," Christian McCaffrey told reporters in Las Vegas this week. "So I think that's what's really special."

Dick Engelhardt is the longtime voice of Fair Lawn football and noted historian of the school's Athletic Hall of Fame. He graduated three years after Sime. There is a trophy case in the high school honoring one of their most accomplished alumni, a charter member of the Fair Lawn Hall of Fame.

Engelhardt remembers first attending Fair Lawn games in the seventh grade with his late twin brother Bill, and they watched as the Cutters won the 1953 league title and shared the state championship with Hackensack under legendary coach Frank Bennett.

“The team was led by star running back Dave Sime,” Engelhardt said. “Fair Lawn fans were proud and marveled at Sime’s later fame at track in college and in the Olympics where he became ‘The World’s Fastest Human.’”

Lisa Sime McCaffrey met her husband, Ed McCaffrey when the two were standout athletes at Stanford (Lisa on the soccer field; Ed was a star wide receiver).

Of course, Ed was later selected by the New York Giants in the third round of the 1991 NFL Draft, and he spent three years with Big Blue before heading to the 49ers and Broncos, winning three Super Bowls.

Ed and Christian McCaffrey could become just the second father-son duo to win a Super Bowl as players with the same team, joining Steve (Super Bowl XXV) and Zak DeOssie (Super Bowl XLII and XLVI) for the Giants.

“It would definitely would be cool,” Christian told The Athletic when asked about following in Ed's Super footsteps. “We were fortunate enough to have a dad who won three Super Bowls, had a lot of success, played 13 years, but also did it the right way and was a great father. He taught all of us how to play the game and do it the right way. To be able to share that moment with him would be awesome.”

And, according to his son, Dave Sime would have cherished this moment for the kid he called Snowball.

"Christian being at the Super Bowl, it's the Super Bowl, and it's given me a chance to hear all the stories again about what Dad was able to do," Scott Sime said. "I don't think I realized the magnitude of what my dad accomplished, and I know he would've thought it was pretty cool that Christian has this chance, and how this is a proud moment for our entire family."

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Christian McCaffrey: Super Bowl star's grandfather an NJ legend