Question: Who were former famous Latin pro football players?strong>

Answer:
Anthony Munoz (Offensive Line – All Pro) – Cincinnati Bengals

Ignacio Saturnino “Lou” Molinet, Halfback, Cornell University, 1927 Frankford Yellowjackets

Jesse Rodriguez, Fullback/Punter, Salem College, 1929 Buffalo Bisons

Kelly Rodriguez, Halfback, West Virginia Wesleyan College, 1930-1931 Frankford Yellowjackets/Minneapolis Red Jackets

Waldo Don Carlos, Center, Drake University, Played 1931 Green Bay Packers

Joe Aguirre, End, St. Mary’s College of California, 1941, 1943-1945 Washington Redskins, 1946-1949 Los Angeles Dons of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC)

Peter Perez, Guard, University of Illinois, 1945 Chicago Bears

Eddie Saenz, Halfback, USC, 1946-1951 Washington Redskins

John Sanchez, Tackle, University of San Francisco, 1947 Detroit Lions, 1947-1949 Washington Redskins, 1949-1950 New York Giants

Gonzalo Morales, Halfback, St. Mary’s College of California, Played 1947-1948 Pittsburgh Steelers

Daniel Garza, End, University of Oregon, 1949 New York Yankees (AAFC), 1950 New York Yanks

Ray Romero, Guard, Kansas State University, 1951 Philadelphia Eagles

Joe Arenas, Halfback, University of Omaha-Nebraska, 1951-1957 San Francisco 49ers

Genaro “Gene” Brito, End, Loyola University, 1951-1953, 1955-1958 Washington Redskins, 1959-1960 Los Angeles Rams

George Maderos, Defensive Back, Chico State University, 1955-1956 San Francisco 49ers

Ricardo Jose “Rick” Casares, Fullback, University of Florida, Played 1955-1964 Chicago Bears, 1965 Washington Redskins, 1966 Miami Dolphins

Alex Bravo, Defensive Back, California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, 1957-1958 Los Angeles Rams, 1960-1961 Oakland Raiders

Please see additional information for Latin Pro Football Players below:

General History – Latin-Americans in Pro Football

Pioneers, Milestones and Firsts

By Mario Longoria
Special to Profootballhof.com

In 2000, Heidi Cadwell contacted the Pro Football Hall of Fame about donating her grandfather’s NFL contract from 1927. Her call was of great interest to the Hall because at the time it was widely believed that Jesse Rodriguez, a fullback-punter with the 1929 Buffalo Bisons, was the first Hispanic player in NFL history.   Further research by the Hall of Fame and Hispanic historian Mario Longoria confirmed that, in fact, Ignacio “Lou” Molinet played in the NFL in 1927. Molinet, a native of Chaparra, Cuba, played nine games for the Frankford Yellowjackets that season.

1920-1931

The contract of Ignacio Molinet was issued and completed in 1927, the first Hispanic-American player in the NFL.

Hispanic American Firsts in the Modern Era

First Hispanic American Drafted by a NFL Club: Joe Aguirre, End (St. Mary’s College of California) Picked by the Washington Redskins in the ninth round of the 1941 draft.

First Hispanic American Quarterback in the NFL: Tom Flores (Pacific), Oakland Raiders (AFL) 1960

First Hispanic American to Win All-League Honors: Tom Fears (Santa Clara/UCLA), Los Angeles Rams, 1949

First Hispanic American to Win Individual League Statistical Championship: Eddie Saenz, Halfback (USC). Washington Redskins 1947 (kickoff return yardage)

First Hispanic American Elected to Pro Football Hall of Fame: Tom Fears, End (Santa Clara/UCLA), Los Angeles Rams 1948-1956, elected 1970

First Hispanic American Selected First Overall in the NFL Draft: Jim Plunkett, Quarterback (Stanford), New England Patriots 1971.

Coaching Firsts by Hispanic Americans

First Hispanic American Head Coaches: Tom Fears, 1967-70 New Orleans Saints and 1974-1975 Southern California Sun (WFL); Tom Flores, 1979-1988 Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders, and 1992-1994 Seattle Seahawks.

First Hispanic American Assistant Coaches: Tom Fears, 1959, 1962-1964 Green Bay Packers, 1960-1961 Los Angeles Rams, 1965 Atlanta Falcons; Tom Flores, 1971 Buffalo Bills, 1972-1978 Oakland Raiders; Pete Rodriguez, 1983-1984 Michigan Panthers (USFL), 1985 Denver Gold (USFL), 1986 Jacksonville Bulls (USFL), 1987 Ottawa Rough Riders (CFL), 1988-1989 Los Angeles Raiders, 1990-1993 Phoenix Cardinals, 1994-1997 Washington Redskins, 1998-2001 Seattle Seahawks.

HispanicSportsBusiness Update

• In a trade announced April 23, the Kansas City Chiefs traded tight end Tony González – one of the NFL’s most widely-known Latino stars – to the Atlanta Falcons for a 2010 second-round draft pick. González is the only tight end in league history to be selected to 10 Pro Bowls. He holds the NFL record for tight ends with 916 receptions; 10,940 yards receiving; 76 receiving touchdowns and 26 100-yard receiving games. González, 33, asked for a trade in October 2008 during the Chiefs’ 2-14 season. As a member of the Falcons, he is expected to make an instant impact and make the team a Super Bowl contender.

BIOGRAPHY

Mark Sánchez
Age: 22
Birthplace: Long Beach, CA
High School: Mission Viejo High School, Mission Viejo, CA
College: University of Southern California
Football position: quarterback

Sánchez is a third-generation Mexican American. His great-grandfather was born in Zacatecas, Mexico and was one of the displaced Hispanics who lived in Los Angeles’ Chávez Ravine – a hardscrabble place where Mexican immigrant families were cleared out to make way for Dodgers Stadium.  Sánchez hails from a family of football players. Older brother Nick Sánchez Jr. was a Yale University quarterback, and his other older brother, Brandon Sánchez, played on DePauw University’s offensive line. Dad Nick Sánchez Sr. was a quarterback at East Los Angeles College.  Sánchez’s growing Los Angeles fan base includes legions of Latinos, and his fame in the Mexican-American community has already been likened to that of now-retired boxer Oscar de la Hoya and retired Los Angeles Dodgers pitching legend Fernando Valenzuela.  Sánchez began taking Spanish lessons in his junior year at USC so he could conduct interviews with Spanish-language media without the need of a translator.  Interest in Sánchez from Mexico-based media in addition to U.S.-based networks prompted the decision.

Active Latin Players in the NFL Today:

Roberto Garza of the Bears is one of 24 Hispanic-American players on NFL rosters this season. The complete list:
Ken Amato, LS, Tennessee
Richard Angulo, TE, Jacksonville
Adam Archuleta, S, Chicago
Jason Babin, LB, Houston
Greg Camarillo, WR, Miami
Luis Castillo, DT, San Diego
Eduardo Castaneda, LB, Houston
Frank Davis, G, Detroit
Donnie Edwards, LB Kansas City
Antonio Garay, T, Chicago
Jeff Garcia, QB, Tampa Bay
Roberto Garza, C, Chicago
Anthony Gonzalez, WR, Indianapolis
Tony Gonzalez, TE, Kansas City
Martin Gramatica, PK, Dallas
Joselio Hanson, CB, Philadelphia
J.P. Losman, QB, Buffalo
Oscar Lua, LB, New England
Glenn Martinez, WR, Denver
Ramiro Pruneda, T, Kansas City
Mauel Ramirez, G, Detroit
Tony Romo, QB, Dallas
Salomon Solano, DT, Detroit
Daniel Sepulveda, P, Pittsburgh

Copyright of the NFL.com

Jews & Football

Commentary by Dr. Gerhard Falk

Football – The Jewish Experience

Recently, Dr. Gerhard Falk sent his publisher, The Haworth Press, a new manuscript entitled: The American Identity: What Football Means to U.S. Although there are now about 2,300 books concerning football in print, he decided to write another one because his book does not deal with the history of football or the careers of football players or the techniques of playing offense or defense. Instead, he wrote a social-psychology of football and therefore included the Jewish experience concerning this important game.

At present there are seventeen Jewish football players on the teams of major football universities, the Canadian Football League or the NFL.

Prior to 1948, when Israel became an independent country, Jews everywhere were suspected of having no fighting ability, no physical courage and no sports competence whatever. The reasons for these suspicions can be found in European Jewish history, which is best described by saying that the “Jews of Europe were treated in the same fashion as the blacks in Mississippi before the civil rights movement.”

It is not necessary to here refute these bigotries. Suffice it to say that behavior is learned and that the anti-Jewish beliefs and attitudes of American college administrators, faculties and students allowed Jewish students to enter American institutions of higher learning in very limited numbers until after World War II.

Therefore, Jewish students were seldom represented among the elite football playing colleges like Harvard, Yale or Princeton at a time when college football, and not professional football, received most of the attention of the American public.

At the eve of World War II, i.e. in 1939, the “Ivy League” elite colleges of the U.S. were almost totally closed to Jewish students. This had come about because in earlier years, i.e. during the ‘20’s and ‘30’s, these colleges selected their freshman classes by giving applicants an examination so that only those were admitted who scored high on such a test. However, by the middle of the 1920’s the examination system had been abolished because “too many” Jews and other ethnics had passed the examination with high marks. Therefore the three “Ivy League” colleges, Harvard, Yale and Princeton, and other colleges, decided in the 1920’s to abandon academics as the center of attention for their students and to substitute athletics. Indeed, scholarship was “looked down upon”.

As scholarship declined, only those who lacked the financial resources and cultural values that marked the “gentleman” now achieved high grades and engaged in scholarship. These were the Jews, who looked upon college as an elevator for upward social mobility. Christians, overwhelmingly Protestants of English ancestry, opted for “a gentleman’s C”.

As the Jewish students entered Harvard, Yale and Princeton in ever greater numbers in the 1920’s, White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants feared that their dominance of the “Big Three” colleges was threatened. They therefore decided to impose a quota system restricting the number of Jews accepted each year.

That quota system was enforced until the Second World War produced so many veterans whose tuition was paid by the U.S. Veteran’s Administration that these prejudices could no longer be supported, as every “Tom, Dick and Harry” came to the Ivy League colleges and other schools at the expense of the government.

Nevertheless, the inclusion of Jews into the so-called “elite” colleges of America was not fully achieved until the revolutionary ‘60’s. In the 1950’s anti-Jewish discrimination continued in many schools, as depicted in the movie School Ties, which deals with the rejection of a Jewish student by his classmates when it became known that he, the star quarterback on the school team, was Jewish.

Inspection of a list of Jewish football players reveals at once that before and after the imposition of the anti-Jewish quota system, there were Jewish football players on the teams of Harvard, Yale and Princeton. For example, Phil King was an All-American in the 1890’s at Princeton. Israel Levine played for Pennsylvania in 1905-1906 and Ralph Horween played for Harvard in 1916. Thereafter, only the great Sid Luckman played for an “Ivy League” school before 1945. Luckman, however, played for Columbia University, a college which also tried to keep Jews out or at a minimum. However, because Columbia is in New York City with its large Jewish population, it was more difficult for Columbia to impose a Jewish quota on admissions than was true in other localities.

Luckman is now a member of the Columbia University Football Hall of Fame and of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. After playing halfback at Columbia, Luckman joined the Chicago Bears in 1939 and played quarterback.

Ron Mix, also Jewish, began his career in 1960. Ron Mix has been called “the greatest tackle who ever lived.” He was born in Los Angeles in 1938 and attended the University of Southern Calfornia on a football scholarship. He played for 12 years with the San Diego Chargers. His career as a lineman was so impressive that the Chargers retired his number, seventy-four. In 1969 Mix was named to the all-star AFL team and in 1979 he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Mix studied law at night during the football season and became known as “the intellectual assassin”. He practices law in San Diego and represents retired players in workmen’s compensation claims for athletic-related injuries. After Luckman and Mix, Jewish football players became commonplace in the NFL and in colleges throughout the country, including Jay Fiedler, an engineering graduate of Dartmouth College and starting quarterback for the Miami Dolphins.
Fiedler’s career statistics in the NFL are: Played 55 games, started in 42. He completed 720 passes for a 60.0 percentage. He has passed for 8,413 yards and achieved 50 passing touchdowns. His quarterback rating is 79.6. Consider also this: when Fiedler injured his thumb and could not play one year, the Dolphins played 6 games and compiled a 2-4 record. With Fiedler, Miami finished 7-3.

Mike Rosenthal is another successful NFL player. He was a star offensive lineman at Notre Dame and was drafted by the New York Giants in 1999. He is 6’7”, weighs 315 lbs. and is indeed a Giant. In March 2003 he became an unrestricted free agent and then signed with the Minnesota Vikings for $1.8 million.
There are also Hayden Epstein, Lennie Friedman, Antonio Garay, Ben Mahdavi, Josh Miller, Gus Ornstein, Sage Rosenfels, Mike Saffer, Mike Seidman, and Josh Taves, all NFL players. Noah Cantor, another professional, plays for Toronto in the Canadian Football League.

I hope you enjoyed reading this refreshing information about these great Jewish football players.

Copyright from http://jbuff.com

1. Q: What is the difference between the two goal posts on a national football field?

A: The distance between two goal posts is 120 yards. Each end zone is 10 yards deep and the football field is 100 yards long from end zone to end zone.

2. Q: What is the length of a football goal post?

A: The goal post consists of a post, crossbar, and two uprights. The post that holds the uprights is 10 feet tall and placed approximately 80 feet from the sidelines. The crossbar, which is 18 feet, 6 inches in length, sits atop the post. The uprights extend 30 feet above the crossbar.

Additional infomation about the goal posts.

Goal Posts:

Goal post measurements for the different levels of play are:

High School: Goal posts are 10 feet high and 23 feet, 4 inches wide

College, NFL and CFL : Goal posts are 10 feet high and 18 feet, 6 inches wide.