Julius Alphonsus Rykovich (April 6, 1923 – December 23, 1974) was an

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 wi ...

halfback,

kickoff returner A return specialist or kick returner is a player on the special teams unit of a gridiron football team who specializes in returning punts and kickoffs. There are few players who are exclusively return specialists; most also play another positio ...

, and defensive back in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

(NFL) for the

Washington Redskins The Washington Commanders are a professional American football team based in the Washington metropolitan area. The Commanders compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) N ...

and the Chicago Bears. Rykovich also played in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) for the Buffalo Bills and the

Chicago Rockets The Chicago Rockets were an American football team that played in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) from 1946 to 1949. During the 1949 season, the team was known as the Chicago Hornets. Unlike the Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, a ...

. He played college football at the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...

and the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic university, Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend, Indiana, South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin fo ...

and was drafted in the second round of the 1947 NFL Draft. He was co-MVP alongside Buddy Young in the 1947 Rose Bowl for Illinois, and was inducted into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame in 1993.

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* 1923 births 1974 deaths American football halfbacks Buffalo Bills (AAFC) players Chicago Bears players Chicago Rockets players Illinois Fighting Illini football players Notre Dame Fighting Irish football players Washington Redskins players Players of American football from Gary, Indiana Croatian players of American football Yugoslav emigrants to the United States Croatian emigrants to the United States {{runningback-1920s-stub