Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame

Relive It All Again

Football

Dennis McKnight

Dennis McKnight, a lightly-recruited lineman at Susan Wagner High School and an undrafted free agent from Drake, played 11 seasons in the National Football League, all but two as a starter with the San Diego Chargers. He was the leader of the offensive line in San Diego, voted captain and player rep by his teammates, and an alternate to the 1988 Pro Bowl, before finishing his career with the Lions and Eagles.(Read more...)

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Adewale Ogunleye

Adewale Ogunleye, descended from Nigerian royalty, is the only Staten Islander to play in both the National Football League Pro Bowl and the Super Bowl. An all-city defensive end at Tottenville High School and the all-time sack leader at Indiana, Ogunleye played six NFL seasons with the Dolphins, Bears and Texans, leading the American Football Conference with 15 sacks in 2003, and helping lead the Bears to the 2007 Super Bowl.(Read more...)

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Fred Olivieri

Fred Olivieri, the Curtis High School football coach for 26 seasons, took over a struggling team and made it the standard against which all public-school programs were measured, winning four city championships and 170 games. Olivieri, the 1997 Staten Island Advance Sportsman of the Year, sent three of his players to the National Football League, and helped dozens of others to a college education they might not have had without him.(Read more...)

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Eric Olsen

Eric Olsen, the 2005 New York State High School Player of the Year at Poly Prep in Brooklyn, and the 2009 Guardian of the Year as Notre Dame’s top offensive lineman, played four NFL seasons for the Denver Broncos, New Orleans Saints, and Tennessee Titans. Olsen started 51 consecutive games as a center, guard and tackle at Notre Dame, where he was a team co-captain as a senior.(Read more...)

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Lance Olssen

Lance Olssen was an All-City lineman at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, and All-Big Ten defensive tackle at Purdue, and played two seasons for the National Football League’s San Francisco 49ers, and two more for the Edmonton Eskimos in the Canadian Football League. Olssen started 28 straight games on Purdue teams that went 24-6-1, won a Big Ten championship and shared another, and beat Southern Cal 14-13 in the 1967 Rose Bowl;  and was a (Read more...)