Danny Marcellus Jiggetts (born March 10, 1954) is a retired

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wit ...

offensive lineman In gridiron football, a lineman is a player who specializes in play at the line of scrimmage. The linemen of the team currently in possession of the ball are the offensive line, while linemen on the opposing team are the defensive line. A numb ...

. He was drafted by the

Chicago Bears The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine ...

in the

1976 NFL Draft The 1976 National Football League draft was an annual player selection meeting held April 8–9, 1976, at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, New York. The draft lasted 17 rounds, with the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Seattle Seahawks ...

Early life

Jiggetts was born in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Kings County is the most populous Administrative divisions of New York (state)#County, county in the State of New York, ...

, but grew up on Long Island when his parents moved there soon after he was born. Excelling in both academics and athletics at Westhampton Beach High School, Jiggetts ranked in the top 10% of his class academically, earning a Rotary scholarship for college and was elected class president each of his four years of high school as well as earning eleven

varsity letters A varsity letter (or monogram) is an award earned in the United States for excellence in school activities. A varsity letter signifies that its recipient was a qualified varsity team member, awarded after a certain standard was met. Description ...

in three different sports. He was extremely popular, noted a high school friend from Quogue, former United States Congressman Michael P. Forbes, who graduated a year earlier in 1971. Jiggetts was named a high school All-American

defensive end Defensive end (DE) is a defensive position in the sport of gridiron football. This position has designated the players at each end of the defensive line, but changes in formations over the years have substantially changed how the position is p ...

, and also won the New York state regional championships in both the discus and

shot put The shot put is a track and field event involving "putting" (throwing) a heavy spherical ball—the ''shot''—as far as possible. The shot put competition for men has been a part of the modern Olympics since their revival in 1896, and women's ...

. Jiggetts was heavily recruited out of high school for football. He signed a

national letter of intent National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ...

to go to

Ohio State The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best public ...

and play for their coach

Woody Hayes Wayne Woodrow Hayes (February 14, 1913 – March 12, 1987) was an American football player and coach. He served as the head coach at Denison University (1946–1948), Miami University in Oxford, Ohio (1949–1950), and Ohio State University (19 ...

, but eventually changed his mind and decided to enroll in Harvard instead in order to keep a promise he made to his mother who died four days after his high school graduation.

Collegiate playing career

Playing offensive tackle for Harvard, Jiggetts was named All-Ivy League three times and All-East twice as well as All-American by both the AP and UPI during his senior year in 1975. Named captain of Harvard's 1975 football team, he was not only the first

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

to be honored as such, but he also helped lead the team to its first undisputed

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schoo ...

Championship. Considered to be one of the finest lineman in the history of the league, Jiggetts was named to the Ivy's Silver Anniversary All-Star Team and was inducted into the Harvard Varsity Hall of Fame. After graduating, Jiggetts was drafted in the sixth round of

by the

Professional playing career

Jiggetts played 98 games as a backup offensive lineman for the Bears from 1976 to 1982. Released by the team during the 1983 preseason, Jiggetts went on to play one season each for the Chicago Blitz and San Antonio Gunslingers in the

USFL The United States Football League (USFL) was a professional American football league that played for three seasons, 1983 through 1985. The league played a spring/summer schedule in each of its active seasons. The 1986 season was scheduled to be ...

before retiring in 1985. During his playing career, Jiggetts was active in player-management labor relations in both the NFL and USFL. He served as a player representative for the Bears and was the vice-president of the

National Football League Players Association The National Football League Players Association, or NFLPA, is a labor union representing National Football League (NFL) players. The NFLPA, which has headquarters in Washington, D.C., is led by president J. C. Tretter and executive director D ...

at the time of the 1982 strike. Jiggetts was also involved in attempts to unionize USFL players as a member of the Blitz.

Sportscasting career

Jiggetts joined ''

NFL on CBS The ''NFL on CBS'' is the branding used for broadcasts of National Football League (NFL) games that are produced by CBS Sports, the sports division of the CBS television network in the United States. The network has aired NFL game telecasts sin ...

'' as an analyst in 1985. In 1987, 1990, 1991, and 1993, he has split play-by-play partners with James Brown and Brad Nessler. He co-hosted "Monsters and Money in the Morning" with Mike North on

CBS 2 Chicago WBBM-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, airing programming from the CBS network. Owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division, the station maintains studios on West Washington S ...

from February 1 to August 27, 2010. He started working with North on their "Monsters of the Midday" radio program in 1992 as part of the launch of Chicago's WSCR sports radio station, known as "The Score," which is now at 670-AM. They co-hosted Monsters of the Midday for eight years. The Monsters and Money show was not considered a news program by station management but was added to the lineup as an attempt to increase its advertising revenue earning potential, its experimental format of combining sports talk by Jiggetts and North with news headlines, weather and discussions of financial matters never really caught on with viewers. He is also a sportscaster for NBC Sports Chicago and was the co-host of a daily morning show on the station. He has also worked for CBS and

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

and hosted a highly rated radio show on

WSCR WSCR (670 AM radio, AM) – branded as 670 The Score – is a Commercial radio, commercial Sports radio, sports radio station licensed to serve Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, servicing the Chicago metropolitan area and much of surrounding Northern ...

in Chicago. In September 2010, he returned to WFLD-TV to anchor sports on Fridays and Saturdays. Jiggetts currently hosts several shows on NBC Sports Chicago. He was inducted into the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame on Long Island, New York, in the Football Category with the Class of 1990. Personally, Jiggetts has a daughter, Lauren, who is a newscaster for the WGN Early Morning News in Chicago.

References

External links

Jiggetts's stats
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jiggetts, Dan 1954 births Living people American football offensive tackles Chicago Bears players Chicago Blitz players Harvard Crimson football players College football announcers National Football League announcers National Basketball Association broadcasters Television sports anchors from Chicago Sportspeople from Brooklyn Players of American football from New York City People from Quogue, New York Sportspeople from Suffolk County, New York