Gino John Marchetti <small>(Pronounced: Mar-KETT-i)</small> (January 2, 1926 – April 29, 2019) was an American professional football player who was a defensive end and offensive tackle in the National Football League (NFL). He played in 1952 for the Dallas Texans and from 1953 to 1966 for the Baltimore Colts.
He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1972. In 1969, Marchetti was named to the National Football League 50th Anniversary All-Time Team. In 1994, Marchetti was named to the National Football League 75th Anniversary All-Time Team. In 2019, he was unanimously named to the NFL 100th Anniversary All-Time Team. He is one of only six players to be on the 50th, 75th and 100th anniversary teams, along with his Baltimore Colts teammate Johnny Unitas.
Early life
Family background
Marchetti was born near Smithers, West Virginia, just south of the capital, Charleston, in Kayford, West Virginia. He was the son of Italian immigrants Ernesto (later Ernest) and Maria (Dalforte) from Lucca, Italy in Tuscany. Not wanting a coal mining life, the family moved to Antioch, California when Marchetti was young, where Ernest opened the Nevada Club which served food and drinks, and operated legal poker games. In a 2000 interview with Baltimore sportswriter John Steadman, Marchetti stated that he and his parents did not hold a grudge over his mother's treatment by the government, and emphasized his parents love for America.
Military service
In 1944, while a high school senior and only 17 years old, Marchetti enlisted in the U.S. Army. He still received a high school diploma because he enlisted. He became a member of the 273rd Unit of the U.S. Army's Sixty-ninth Infantry, which originally was sent to London. Marchetti arrived for combat in Europe around the time of the end of the Battle of the Bulge as a machine gunner. He fought initially in Germany at the Siegfried Line. Among his experiences, Marchetti said, "'The first time I saw snow, I slept in it...." His company was the first to make contact with Russian soldiers during the war's end.
College football and the 1951 Dons
thumb|left|200px|Marchetti during his junior year at USF, 1950.
Marchetti returned home to Antioch from the Army in 1946. He played semipro football for the Antioch Hornets in 1947. He later attended Modesto Junior College for one year before joining the football program at the University of San Francisco (USF).
The USF Dons enjoyed an undefeated season in 1951. In addition to Marchetti, that team had two other future NFL Hall of Fame players, Ollie Matson and Bob. St. Clair. A number of other teammates were also future NFL players. Linebacker Burl Toler's NFL playing career ended before it started when he suffered a shattering knee injury during a college all-star game in 1952. Toler later became an NFL head linesman in 1965, making him the first African American game official in any major professional American sports league. The team's young publicist was Pete Rozelle, who went on to become NFL commissioner and another hall of famer. The team was coached by future NFL coach Joe Kuharich. Marchetti was named a Dons captain,
Marchetti believed his mother's poor treatment in Antioch may have been the source of his standing up for Matson and Toler. He was once in a bar with Toler and two white players (Ed Brown and Scooter Scudero), and they were refused service because Toler was black. Upset for Toler at the time, and even considering roughing up the bar, Marchetti told Toler how his mother had been kicked out of Antioch.
Professional career
Marchetti was 26 when he played his first NFL game.
In Dallas, he once volunteered to substitute at tight end because there was no one else left to play the position, and caught a touchdown pass. Colts coach Keith Molesworth moved Marchetti to left offensive tackle in 1954, He eventually was taken to the locker room as the game went into overtime. After the Colts won, the team presented Marchetti with the game ball. He was voted most valuable player of the 1963 Pro Bowl.
Quarterback sacks were not kept as an official statistic during Marchetti's playing years, but informal records kept after 1960 indicate that Marchetti had 56 sacks from ages 34 to 39, past his prime. Baltimore Colts unofficial team records had him with 43 sacks in one single 12-game season during his prime, well past the current NFL season record. Marchetti himself recalled nine sacks in a single game.
His Hall of Fame teammate Art Donovan had this to say about him: "For his first couple of years with the Colts, Gino Marchetti was our enforcer. Gino was a tough kid from the ghetto.... An Antioch recruiter had spotted the big hulk at the racetrack one day and brought him along to the head coach. He immediately became a star. He could also kick some ass, and that particular talent gained him quite a reputation as not only perhaps the greatest defensive end to ever play the game, but also as a dirty, cheap-shot artist. Then one day Gino was born again, so to speak. He had just brought down Detroit's marvelous halfback Doak Walker, and he couldn't resist digging the heel of his hand into Walker's schnozz as he was getting up off the ground. But instead of starting a fight or yelling anything, Walker just looked at him. Didn't say a word, just stared at Gino. Gino felt like a piece of shit. 'I could see it in his eyes,' he said later. 'A big guy like me, with probably eighty pounds and six inches on Walker, having to resort to a mean, lowdown trick like that. That look of disgust reformed me. I'm no longer the hatchet man around here.' Which, of course, did not mean that Gino stopped getting his licks in. Everyone gets their licks in playing football."
Marchetti's Colts teams included a number of African American players, like NFL hall of famers Lenny Moore and Jim Parker (both on the NFL's 100th Anniversary All-Time Team, like Marchetti, and their Colt teammates, Johnny Unitas and Raymond Berry), Eugene "Big Daddy" Lipscomb, Sherman Plunkett, and Lenny Lyles, among other key players on those teams. The disparate and disrespectful treatment of the team's black players over the years later caused former Colts star and Heisman trophy winner Alan Ameche to ask Lenny Moore how the black and white players could all have even held together as a great team. Moore's later response to Ameche's speculation was "'I don't know either ... but I think it was something inside Gino Marchetti.'" He is also a member of Modesto Junior College Athletic Hall of Fame Class of 1990, and the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame. In 2021, the Athletic listed him as the 34th greatest player in NFL history. In 1999, the Sporting News listed him as the 15th greatest player of all time. Gregg said in an interview: "You ask who was the best ... just my opinion, Marchetti was the best all-around player I ever played against. Great pass rusher. Great against the run. And he never let you rest."
Marchetti, who always called Unitas "kid", was one of the rare people that Johnny Unitas looked up to. In turn, Marchetti appreciated Unitas for his honesty with himself and others, and his workmanlike, no-excuses, no-nonsense leadership as a quarterback. Raymond Berry described the team's two leaders as each having an unusual blend of humility and self-confidence.
Restaurant
right|280px|Ad for Ameche's Drive-Through and Gino's Hamburgers from a 1962 Colts game program.
With the encouragement and partial financial support of Colts owner Caroll Rosenbloom, Marchetti joined a fast-food restaurant business with Colts teammates Alan Ameche, Joe Campanella, and Louis Fisher.
In 2009, Marchetti teamed with other former key Gino's employees to resurrect the Gino's name. Hiring commenced in September 2010 to staff their first new restaurant in the company's old hometown of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and Gino's Burgers & Chicken, as the company is now known, opened its first store on October 25, 2010. This restaurant has since closed. the chain operates restaurants in Glen Burnie, Maryland and Towson, Maryland.
Death
Marchetti died of complications of pneumonia at Paoli Hospital in Paoli, Pennsylvania on April 29, 2019.
Family
Marchetti's grandson Keith Carter played tight end for UCLA and later won a Super Bowl as a coach with the Seattle Seahawks.
After his marriage to Flora Etta Beck ended in divorce, Marchetti married Joan Plecenik in 1978. He had two daughters, Gina Burgess and Michelle Kapp, and two sons, John and Eric. Another grandson, Conner D. Marchetti.
Awards and honors
- Pro Bowl Selection (1955–1965)
- All-NFL Selection (1956–1964)
- MVP 1963 Pro Bowl
- NFL 50th Anniversary Team as the defensive end (1969)
- Pro Football Hall of Fame (1972)
- Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame (1985)
- NFL 75th Anniversary Team (1994)
- All-Madden All-Millennium Team (2000)
- NFL All-Time Team (2000)
- NFL 100th Anniversary Team (2019) (#34)
- The Athtetic's top 100 players in NFL history (2021)
- In 1999, he was ranked number 15 on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Football Players, the second-highest-ranking defensive end behind Deacon Jones.
- National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame
- NFL 100 Greatest Players (#39) (2010)
- Modesto Junior College Hall Of Fame (1990)
- Antioch created a park and named it after Marchetti