Longtime agent Jeff Sperbeck's fatal fall from golf cart driven by John Elway ruled an accident

Luca Evans, The Denver Post on May 9, 2025

Published in Golf

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DENVER — A California coroner’s office has officially ruled that the death of Jeff Sperbeck, the sports agent who died after falling from a golf cart driven by longtime friend and business partner John Elway, was an accident.

On Friday, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department — which launched an investigation into Sperbeck’s death after a media frenzy around Elway’s involvement — released a statement from the Riverside County Coroner’s Bureau that ruled out any criminal activity.

“The Cause of Death is ‘Blunt Head Trauma,’ and the Manner of Death is ‘Accident,’ and the Mode of Death … is ‘Passenger fell from golf cart,' ” the Coroner’s Bureau said in the statement.

Medical personnel first responded to a call made by Elway’s party on Saturday, April 26, after Sperbeck fell from the cart at The Madison Club, a California country club. He was transported to Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs, where he was put on life support before being pronounced dead early April 30.

The sheriff’s department didn’t begin an investigation until it got a large wave of media inquiries, as Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco previously told The Denver Post, and because of the “implications” that Elway acted wrongly in the incident. In the days following Sperbeck’s death, Bianco maintained that nothing the medical personnel had seen on the day of their initial response merited an investigation from the sheriff’s department.

“This, from all appearances and from all evidence, seems to just be a horrific accident,” Bianco told The Post last week.

The coroner officially ruled as such Friday, and the investigation is drawing to a close.

Bianco told The Post in a text Friday that the department has concluded all interviews and is waiting on a few outstanding videos to supplement witness statements, but that he anticipated those videos would “just corroborate the rest of what we have learned.”

Sperbeck, Elway’s agent during the quarterback’s Hall of Fame career with the Denver Broncos, was 62. He is survived by his wife, Cori, and three children, Carly, Sam and Jackson.