Gold Jacket Spotlight: Football allowed Randy Gradishar to follow father’s footsteps

As a senior at Champion High School in eastern Ohio, RANDY GRADISHAR got a call from someone whose name he had never heard.

“As soon as I hung up the phone, I looked at my dad and said, ‘Who’s Woody Hayes?’ I mean, we had no clue,” Randy recalled in an interview.

They might have been the only two people in the football-crazed state not to know the head coach of the powerhouse Ohio State Buckeyes.

Meeting Hayes later during a half-day of work at the grocery store his father owned, Randy, who steps into this week’s Gold Jacket Spotlight, watched his father and Hayes connect through their service in World War II. By winning over Randy’s father, Hayes soon signed the player who became, in his coach’s words, “the best linebacker I ever coached.”

At Ohio State, Randy was a three-year starter, two-time All-American and a Rose Bowl champion, but he would call the sport an “extracurricular.” He focused more on the school’s ROTC’s program.

“My thought was, ‘If I do a couple years of ROTC and I get drafted, I could go in as a 2nd Lieutenant,’” he wrote in an article for DenverBroncos.com.

Randy’s draft number was never selected to serve in Vietnam, but he was selected 14th overall by the Denver Broncos in the 1974 NFL Draft. Though Randy wouldn’t follow his father into the military, he would uncover his place of birth.

Recalling a phone call with his parents after his selection to Denver, “My dad said, ‘Randy, I was born in Pueblo.’”

Pueblo, Colo., is about 100 miles south of Denver.

Randy would spend his entire 10-year career in his father’s home state. Averaging (unofficially) more than 200 tackles a season, he led the Broncos’ “Orange Crush” defense that ranked third overall in total defense, second in run defense and first in passing touchdowns allowed during a nine-year span.

He retired in 1983 with seven Pro Bowls nods, five All-Pro selections and the 1978 Associated Press Defensive Player of the Year award.

After football, another call brought Randy back to his father’s service: The league office invited him to join a USO tour to Baghdad.

The USO, a partner of the NFL for more than 50 years, organizes tours to entertain and convey support to service members overseas. According to its website, the USO had allowed over 180 NFL players, coaches and executives to take part in tours as of 2016.

Randy became one of those 180.

He joined three USO tours – 2004, 2005 and 2007 – visiting Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. One of the trips included Pro Football Hall of Famer BUD GRANT.

“All of the sudden now, I’m kind of on the front lines of people going to war and understanding what my dad might have gone through,” Randy explained on a podcast with Susie Wargin.

Inspired by those tours, Randy has served as an outreach coordinator at Mount Carmel Veterans Service Center, headquartered in Colorado Springs. Since its opening in 2016, the center has provided support to veterans readjusting to civilian life.

“Randy has been a constant around here. He'll talk to transition groups. He will talk to support groups. He goes to outreach events for us. He goes to fundraising events,” Paul Price, the director of operations at Mount Carmel Veterans Service Center, told KOAA News in southern Colorado. “He has an ever presence here at Mount Carmel.”

Through the platform football provided him, Randy’s deep-rooted dedication to supporting the military named him the Denver Broncos’ Salute to Service Award nominee in both 2018 and 2023.

“An appreciation and love for our military has always been part of my core,” Randy wrote on DenverBroncos.com. “Though my dad and uncles didn't share specifics about fighting in WWII, I deeply respected their service. My dad was my HERO, in many ways.”

Forging a connection between service and football, Randy found a way to follow his father’s footsteps.