Gridiron Heroes: Five Superheroes Who Played Football

Crunching hits, highlight reel catches, and shocking upsets. Football is as much a part of the fall tradition here in the United States as pumpkins, multicolored leaves and hooded sweatshirts. Who doesn’t love the pageantry and tradition of a college football game or rooting for a specific football player in a random 4 PM game that could make or break your fantasy football team? With football such a major part of American culture, it makes sense that many great superheroes were football players in their youth. Let’s take a look at a few of the greatest superheroes to ever get down and dirty on the gridiron:

Superman

  

With superspeed and superstrength to go along with those impossibly broad shoulders, it makes sense that Superman would excel at football. While Superman has always loved football (I’m pretty sure it’s a mandatory requirement for representing the “American Way”), comics disagree whether Superman ever played football as a high schooler. Most Superman stories showed that Pa Kent refused to let Clark play football, worried that his superpowers might get exposed or that his superstrength would inadvertently hurt someone. However, John Byrne’s Man of Steel made Clark a star football player in high school, giving him a letter jacket to go along with a more outgoing and confident personality. Clark also played football in Smallville for half a season, where he impressed college scouts enough to earn a scholarship offers to play for Metropolis University.

There’s also one bizarre Golden Age Action Comics issue where Superman drugs and impersonates a college football player to prevent a rival team’s coach from rigging a key game. That’s right, Superman DRUGGED an innocent man (stabbing him with a hypodermic needle in his neck) and knocked him out for days so he could uphold the sanctity of college football. Sounds like your average fanatical college football fan.

Booster Gold

  

Michael Jon Carter AKA Booster Gold, everyone’s favorite superhero from the future, was a star quarterback for Gotham University’s football team in the 25th century until his father convinced him to deliberately lose games to help him win at gambling. When university officials caught Carter, they exposed and expelled him, sending his life into ruins and leading him to become a watchman for the Metropolis Space Museum, where he eventually stole the gear that would make him a superhero in our present day. My favorite part about Booster’s football career is that football is so endearing that it lasted into the distant future with relatively few changes as to how it’s played. 

Beast

  

While the founding X-Men Beast is best known for his genius intellect and blue fur, he was also a star football player in high school. While McCoy’s disproportionately large hands and feet made him the subject of constant teasing in high school, the school’s football coach asked him to try out for the team after noticing his massive frame. McCoy was a natural at football and earned the nickname “Manilla Gorilla” for his size and speed. Unfortunately, football also led to him being exposed as a mutant, when he celebrated winning the conference championship by using his feet to swing on the end zone uprights. By that time, Professor Xavier had noticed McCoy and he soon left school to join the X-Men.

Citizen Steel

  

There’s a ton of other DC superheroes who played football in their pre-superhero days, but I gave this spot to the relatively obscure hero Citizen Steel.  Why?  Because he was a star quarterback for THE Ohio State University, my alma mater and reigning national champion.  A proud Buckeye, Nathan Heywood’s life took a tragic turn when he injured his knee during a football game and later lost part of his leg due to a related infection.  Heywood became Citizen Steel after a group of Nazi themed villains attacked and killed most of his family.  While trying to defend his younger siblings and cousins, Heywood gets the metal blood of Reichsmark on him and causes his body (along with a regrown metal leg) to transform into an organic metal compound.  Steel became a powerhouse member of the JSA and joined Power Girl’s “JSA All-Stars” teams shortly before DC rebooted its universe in 2011.  Sadly, DC missed the opportunity missed the opportunity to team Citizen Steel up with Guy Gardner, an ex-football player for the University of Michigan, Ohio State’s hated rivals.  

NFL SuperPro

  

No superhero football article is complete without talking about NFL SuperPro, the greatest football themed superhero of all time. NFL SuperPro was the creation of Fabian Nicieza, a Marvel writer who agreed to create an NFL themed superhero in exchange for free New York Jets tickets. Nicieza made SuperPro an eccentric “super fan” who became an invincible superhero after a freak accident involving a football uniform, experimental chemicals and fire. The 12 issue series is widely considered to be one of the worst in Marvel history, filled with awful football puns and even more awful football themed villains (including one villain named “Instant Replay). NFL SuperPro disappeared after Marvel cancelled his solo series, although one Marvel Team-Up issue written by Robert Kirkman hinted that the football superhero was still active in New York City. If SuperPro is looking for a new job, I hear the New York Jets are still in need for a quarterback!