Pandel Savic (July 15, 1925 – June 12, 2018) 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 with ...

player, starting at

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

for two years with the

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 ...

Buckeyes. He is of Macedonian-American origin from the village of Drago. Pandel Savic came to

Girard, Ohio Girard is a city in southern Trumbull County, Ohio, United States, along the Mahoning River. The population was 9,603 at the 2020 census. Located directly north of Youngstown, it is a suburb of the Youngstown–Warren metropolitan area. Histor ...

, United States through

Ellis Island Ellis Island is a federally owned island in New York Harbor, situated within the U.S. states of New York and New Jersey, that was the busiest immigrant inspection and processing station in the United States. From 1892 to 1954, nearly 12 mi ...

when he was a little boy. "It was the Steel Valley, and the only way to get out of there was to make it in sports," Savic said. "So I played basketball, baseball, track -- anything I could get my hands on." And so he did, he became a

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

player for

. Savic joined the US Marine Corps in 1943, despite having landed a scholarship to Ohio State. He is a veteran of the Peleliu and

Okinawa is a prefecture of Japan. Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan, has a population of 1,457,162 (as of 2 February 2020) and a geographic area of 2,281 km2 (880 sq mi). Naha is the capital and largest city ...

battles. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he went to Ohio State. He helped the 1949 Buckeyes to Ohio State's first Rose Bowl win over California, gaining 16 total yards rushing and passing, including an important 6 yards on the ground to close out the remaining time and seal the Buckeye victory. The 1949 team also won a share of the

Big Ten The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference) is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representati ...

title, with Savic throwing for 581 yards and six touchdowns on the season. In his later life, Savic went on to play an important role in the golf community and served as longtime chairman of the PGA's

Memorial Tournament The Memorial Tournament is a PGA Tour golf tournament founded in 1976 by Jack Nicklaus. It is played on a Nicklaus-designed course at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio, a suburb north of Columbus. The golf course passes through a large n ...

which he created with his friend

Jack Nicklaus Jack William Nicklaus (born January 21, 1940), nicknamed The Golden Bear, is a retired American professional golfer and List of golf courses designed by Jack Nicklaus, golf course designer. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest go ...

. In 2009, he was inducted into the Ohio State Hall of Fame. He died on June 12, 2018, at the age of 92.

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* 1925 births 2018 deaths American football quarterbacks Ohio State Buckeyes football players American people of Macedonian descent Players of American football from Ohio Macedonian players of American football Golfers from Ohio American people of Serbian descent Yugoslav emigrants to the United States Ohio State University alumni Military personnel from Ohio United States Marine Corps personnel of World War II People from Girard, Ohio {{quarterback-1920s-stub