CHARLESTON, Ill. — A drive to this small Illinois town takes one down a rural road through farms and fields. Soon there emerges a stadium that has 30-foot-high banners on the side depicting notable football figures.

Four stand out. There is a banner for Broncos coach Sean Payton, who once won a Super Bowl with New Orleans, and one for Mike Shanahan, who coached Denver to Super Bowl wins in the 1997 and 1998 seasons. There is one for Tony Romo, a former Dallas Cowboys star who is now the lead NFL analyst for CBS, and one for Jimmy Garoppolo, who once led San Francisco to a Super Bowl and now plays for the Los Angeles Rams.

“It’s unbelievable, especially since Charleston, Ill., is kind of out there in the middle of some cornfields,” Garoppolo said. “But we got good football, man.”

Garoppolo’s reference is to Eastern Illinois University, which sure does have good football. Payton, Shanahan, Romo and Garoppolo all once played quarterback for the small-college Panthers in Charleston, population 17,028.

At 10,000-seat O’Brien Field, the successful alums are recognized on the banners with the years they played for Eastern Illinois. There is Shanahan, a reserve quarterback in the early 1970s before he suffered a career-ending injury in which he lost a kidney and went into coaching, which included being offensive coordinator of the Panthers’ 1978 NCAA Division II title team. There is Payton, an Eastern Illinois star from 1983-86 who played for the Chicago Bears’ strike replacement team in 1987 before going into coaching.

There is Romo, a Panthers star from 1999-2002 who played for the Cowboys from 2003-16 and made four Pro Bowls. And there is Garoppolo, an Eastern Illinois star from 2010-13 who has gone on to play in the NFL for New England, the 49ers, Las Vegas, and the Rams, including leading San Francisco to Super Bowl LIV in the 2019 season.

“I think it’s unusual,” Payton said. “For all of us to come from a small school in central Illinois, that’s kind of unique.”

All four are active in raising funds for Eastern Illinois, which moved in 1981 from Division II to NCAA Division I-AA, which was renamed the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) in 2006. And last June the four all got together for the first time.

Eastern Illinois brought in the alums for a fundraiser, which included 450 attending a dinner with prices being $400 for a couple and an auction being held. The four spent the weekend attending events while doing a lot of reminiscing and cracking plenty of jokes.

“For three days, we were at a bed and breakfast in Charleston and helped them raise money,’’ Payton said. “My only regret was we didn’t film it ’24-7′ because it would have been a good documentary. It was fantastic.”

Payton, Romo and Garoppolo went back and forth during the weekend about who had the best college career at quarterback. With Garappolo having broken Payton’s school record for passing yards — 13,156 to 10,665 — Payton reminded him that he started for just three seasons to Garoppolo’s four.

The four got quite in depth when talking about football.

“It was an incredible weekend,’’ Romo said. “There was a lot of pretty high-level football talk. If you were like a fly on the wall and you like football, you would have really enjoyed that.”

While the quarterbacks from Eastern Illinois never had been all together at the same time, they had connected plenty before in smaller settings. Shanahan, 72, and Payton, 61, got to know each other well when both were coaching in the NFL.

After Payton joined the Broncos in February 2023, they reconnected in Denver, where the retired Shanahan has continued to live. In fact, it was at Shanahan’s Steakhouse, the restaurant owned by the former coach, where the two in 2023 came up with the idea of having a gathering of the four alums in Charleston.

When Romo was seeking to sign with an NFL team as an undrafted free agent in 2003, Shanahan, then coaching the Broncos, and Payton, then the Cowboys’ assistant head coach and quarterbacks coach under Bill Parcells, both tried to sign him. The Cowboys won out, and Payton coached Romo his first three seasons before he left to become head coach of the Saints. He led the Saints to a Super Bowl win in the 2009 season.

Romo, 45, and Garoppolo, 33, overlapped as NFL quarterbacks from 2014-16, and Romo after that has been an analyst for some of Jimmy G’s games. When Garoppolo played for the 49ers from 2017-22, he got to know Shanahan well since his son Kyle Shanahan is their longtime head coach.

“If you take a look at the four of us, we’re all about 10 years apart,’’ Mike Shanahan said. “We came from different eras with different coaching staffs. But it’s been fun to follow those guys’ careers.”

Chris Wilkerson, who was an Eastern Illinois defensive tackle from 1991-94 and an assistant from 1995-2001 before becoming the head coach in 2022, said Shanahan at the school is known as, “The Godfather of EIU football.”

Shanahan arrived at Eastern Illinois in 1970 from East Leyden High School in the Chicago suburb of Franklin Park and dressed out for home games as a freshman. He played defensive back and got into two games as a quarterback in what he called a “mop-up role.” In his sophomore year of 1971, Shanahan played quarterback in just junior-varsity games in order to redshirt him.

In spring practice in 1972, Shanahan’s football career took a life-changing turn.

“I really thought I had a legitimate chance to compete for the starting job and I was quite disappointed when I got my kidney split open and I wasn’t able to play,’’ Shanahan said. “I got hit on an option play and got the wind knocked out of me. I was rushed to the hospital and I ended up passing out. My heart stopped beating for 30 to 45 seconds and I actually had last rites delivered.

“When I woke up, they told me what had happened, so I felt very fortunate to make it through. I was in critical care for four days and and another day in a hospital room.”

Shanahan recovered and that fall sought to continue playing football, but was barred from doing so due to insurance reasons. The Panthers, though, offered to keep him on scholarship and he worked as a student assistant from 1972-73 and a graduate assistant in 1974 before going to Oklahoma in 1975 as an assistant.

In 1978, Shanahan applied to be head coach at Eastern Illinois, but lost out to veteran leader Darrell Mudra, who once had been head coach at Florida State. Mudra then hired Shanahan to be his offensive coordinator and the Panthers won the Division II title.

“I started coaching three years before I anticipated, so I did get some valuable experience,’’ Shanahan said. “I felt fortunate to get my first coordinator job with (Mudra). We went from 1-10 to 12-2 and the national championship and that really helped my career.”

After his one year back in Charleston, Shanahan was hired as offensive coordinator at the University of Minnesota and eventually made it to the Broncos as wide receivers coach in 1984. He went on to become an NFL head coach for 20 seasons, which included going 224-138 with the Broncos from 1995-2008 and winning the two Super Bowls.

Payton, who starred at Naperville Central High School in suburban Chicago, headed to Eastern Illinois a decade after Shanahan. In his three seasons as a starter, he was named a Division I-AA honorable mention All-American in each. He was a two-time Gateway Conference Player of the Year, led the Panthers to the Division I-AA quarterfinals as a senior and still holds the school record with 509 passing yards in a game.

“A Hollywood screenwriter couldn’t have penned a better script for Sean Payton’s senior season,’’ an Eastern Illinois press release read in 1986, when the quarterback threw for 3,466 yards.

Payton got into three strike-replacement games with the Bears in 1987 before starting his coaching career as a San Diego State assistant in 1988. He moved to the NFL as a Philadelphia assistant in 1997 and became a head coach for the first time for the Saints in 2006.

“There are all these things that impact maybe directions we go, and I think that certainly for me this was one of those things that was extremely important,’’ Payton said of attending Eastern Illinois.

Romo, who starred at Burlington (Wis.) High School, led the NCAA in passing efficiency and was a first-team All-American as a senior in 2002, when he threw for 3,418 yards and 34 touchdowns. He was a three-time Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Year.

Garoppolo, who starred at Rolling Meadows High School in suburban Chicago, had 118 touchdown passes in his four seasons with the Panthers. As a senior in 2013, he threw for 5,050 yards and 53 touchdowns and received the Walter Payton Award as the top FCS player.

While Payton and Romo had to go the undrafted route after their college careers, Garoppolo was a second-round NFL pick by the Patriots in 2014. Romo’s path to the NFL involved two of the other former Eastern Illinois quarterbacks.

After Romo wasn’t drafted, the Broncos, with Shanahan as head coach, offered him a $25,000 signing bonus while the Cowboys, with Payton doing the courting, offered $15,000.

“It was really close,’’ Romo said. “Denver was the leader in the clubhouse but then at the last second I just felt right going to Dallas. It would have been great to have learned under Mike. He’s one of the greatest coaches of all time, but I was able to learn from Sean in my early years in the NFL and it was a rewarding experience for me.”

Romo said $10,000 “was a lot of money for me at the time.” But there turned out to be something more important when listening to the sales pitches.

“He saw a better opportunity with us because we had kept three (quarterbacks on the roster the season before) and Mike had kept two,’’ Payton said. “There was a $10,000 difference and I remember at one point (Cowboys owner) Jerry (Jones) said to me, ‘Do we need to go to $25,000?’ I said, ‘I think we’re OK.’’’

Looking back, Shanahan doesn’t deny it was a crafty move by Payton.

“I thought we were going to get Tony,’’ Shanahan said. “Sean did a great job at that time expressing about having that extra quarterback. That was a great sales point.”

The $10,000 difference in salary is a regular joking point involving Romo, and it came up last June in Charleston.

“All those guys, they give me all kinds of crap about that extra $10,000,’’ Shanahan said.

Romo has joked about Payton owing him $10,000 but Payton has claimed it was paid.

“I think at one point I wrote him a check where we were flying together,’’ Payton said. “I was paying for the gas for his plane.”

Romo doesn’t need the $10,000 now after making millions in his playing career and then joining CBS in 2017. He reportedly signed a 10-year, $180 million contract extension in 2020.

After being traded from the Patriots to the 49ers in 2017, Garoppolo signed in February 2018 a five-year, $137.5 million contract, then the biggest deal in NFL history. Garoppolo did lead the 49ers to two NFC championship games but battled injuries in other seasons. His 2018 season ended after six games with a torn ACL and he suffered a foot injury that cost him the final five games of 2022.

“When I tore my ACL, I got to actually work with Mike,’’ Garoppolo said of Kyle Shanahan’s father being regularly in San Francisco. “All the coaches were busy game planning and so Mike and I got to sit down just about every day and just talk ball. That was one of the coolest experiences I’ve had in the NFL.”

Also memorable for Garoppolo was spending time with Shanahan, Payton and Romo last June in Charleston.

“It was cool exchanging stories and hearing what Eastern used to be like and everybody’s journey,’’ said Garoppolo, entering his second Rams season as the backup to Matthew Stafford. 

While Payton and Garoppolo remain active with NFL teams and Romo is with CBS, they aren’t able to get back to Eastern Illinois that often. Shanahan, who retired after concluding his coaching career with Washington in 2013, has returned more regularly, including participating in golf tournaments to help raise money for the school.

During one visit, Shanahan saw the massive banners for the first time at O’Brien Field.

“I went there and I said, ‘Holy cow. This is incredible what they have done,’’’ he said.

Meanwhile, Wilkerson is thrilled to have gotten to know the four former Panthers quarterbacks.

“It’s been a humbling experience to come back (to Eastern Illinois), having been a player myself, and lead our program that has had so many historic names like Coach Shanahan and Coach Payton and Jimmy and Tony,’’ Wilkerson said. “They’re amazing football people but they’re even better human beings. They’ve been very engaged since I came back and very supportive of the institution.”

Shanahan has presented Wilkerson with the 2000 book he wrote “Think Like a Champion,” and inscribed in it, “Best of luck with your coaching career. If I can ever help, please call.” Payton has sent Wilkerson a Broncos helmet with his autograph and a card in which he wrote, “So happy EIU has a true Panther leading the program.”

All four of the Eastern Illinois legends are in the school’s athletics hall of fame and the school has retired No. 18 for Payton and No. 17 for Romo. Those numbers are on display in large type on a wall that overlooks O’Brien Field, where there also is a tribute to Shanahan’s coaching record. Garoppolo will have his No. 10 retired when his schedule allows for another return to Charleston.

All four have assisted with financial contributions to the school over the years.

“We’ve been involved in a lot,’’ Payton said. “It’s your alma mater, so you’re involved in fundraising in any way possible.”

Payton calls it “a little niche that’s kind of cool” of four such recognizable names in football all having been quarterbacks at Eastern Illinois in the small town of Charleston.

Romo agrees.

“It’s rare,’’ he said. “It’s really cool. It’s special.”