Steve Bellisari (born April 21, 1980) is a former
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 ...
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 ...
. He is best known for his time playing football at
Ohio State University
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 publ ...
from 1998 to 2001.
College career
Bellisari, a
special teams
In American football, the specific role that a player takes on the field is referred to as their "position". Under the modern rules of American football, both teams are allowed 11 players on the field at one time and have "unlimited free substitu ...
player and a
defensive back
In gridiron football, defensive backs (DBs), also called the secondary, are the players on the defensive side of the ball who play farthest back from the line of scrimmage. They are distinguished from the other two sets of defensive players, the ...
his first year, replaced
Joe Germaine
Joseph Berton Germaine (born November 16, 1975) is a former American football quarterback. He was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in the fourth round of the 1999 NFL Draft after playing college football at Ohio State.
Germaine earned a Super Bow ...
as the Ohio State
starting quarterback in 1999. He had a stellar
prep
PowerPC Reference Platform (PReP) was a standard system architecture for PowerPC-based computer systems (as well as a reference implementation) developed at the same time as the PowerPC processor architecture. Published by IBM in 1994, it allo ...
career at
Boca Raton High School
Boca Raton Community High School is a magnet high school that is part of the School District of Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. It has been rated an "A" school each consecutive year by the Florida Department of Education since 2005 and ...
, but had a disappointing career at Ohio State.
In contrast to the accurate Germaine, Bellisari was a more athletic, yet at times erratic thrower. Notably, however, Bellisari's interception rate was 3.82%, lower than more highly recognized Ohio State quarterbacks
Art Schlichter
Arthur Ernest Schlichter (, born April 25, 1960) is an American former football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for four seasons with the Colts franchise. He also played one Canadian Football League (CFL) season wit ...
,
Mike Tomczak
Michael John Tomczak (born October 23, 1962) is a former American football player. Tomczak played quarterback for several NFL teams from 1985 through 1999, including the Chicago Bears, the Green Bay Packers, the Cleveland Browns, and the Pittsb ...
,
Greg Frey, and
Bobby Hoying
Bobby Hoying (born September 20, 1972) is a former college and professional American football quarterback. He is the grandson of baseball player Wally Post, who played 15 years in the Major Leagues. Post was an outfielder for the Cincinnati Re ...
. Bellisari experienced an increasingly controversial tenure as Ohio State's starting quarterback, culminating in a one-game suspension towards the end of his senior season following an
arrest
An arrest is the act of apprehending and taking a person into custody (legal protection or control), usually because the person has been suspected of or observed committing a crime. After being taken into custody, the person can be questi ...
for
drunk driving.
He was re-instated before the Michigan game, but did not start.
Bellisari traveled with the team to the
Outback Bowl
The ReliaQuest Bowl is an annual college football bowl game played at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, usually on New Year's Day. The event has been formerly called the Hall of Fame Bowl from 1986 to 1995 and the Outback Bowl from 1996 to ...
against
South Carolina
)''Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no)
, anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind"
, Former = Province of South Carolina
, seat = Columbia
, LargestCity = Charleston
, LargestMetro = ...
, where he finished his career as a substitute, leading Ohio State back from a large deficit to tie the game before giving up an interception that allowed South Carolina to kick a winning field goal.
Statistics
''Source'':
Professional career
Bellisari was drafted by the
St. Louis Rams
The St. Louis Rams were a professional American football team of the National Football League (NFL). They played in St. Louis from 1995 to the 2015 season, before moving back to Los Angeles, where the team had played from 1946 to 1994.
The arr ...
in the
2002 NFL Draft and converted to
safety
Safety is the state of being "safe", the condition of being protected from harm or other danger. Safety can also refer to risk management, the control of recognized hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk.
Meanings
There are ...
. After being out of football, in 2005 Bellisari played for the
Dayton Warbirds of the
NIFL, an indoor football league, and later moved up to the
Manchester Wolves
The Manchester Wolves were a professional arena football team, based at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester, New Hampshire, which folded at the end of the 2009 season along with the rest of the league. They played in the East Division of the ...
in the second half of the
2005 af2 season, leading them into the playoffs with four straight victories to finish out the year. Seldom turning the ball over in his stay with the Wolves, Bellisari was driving the Wolves down the field late in the fourth quarter when he threw his last pass as a Wolf, a game-sealing interception to the
Florida Firecats
The Florida Firecats were a professional arena football team based in Estero, Florida. They played in the AF2, the Arena Football League's developmental league, from 2001 to 2009. They did not join the AFL following the leagues' reorganization in ...
. The final score was
Florida 40, Manchester 39.
AFL statistics
''Stats from ArenaFan'':
See also
*
References
External links
AFL stats
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bellisari, Steve
1980 births
Living people
American football quarterbacks
American football safeties
Dayton Warbirds players
Kansas City Brigade players
Manchester Wolves players
New Orleans VooDoo players
Ohio State Buckeyes football players
St. Louis Rams players
Sportspeople from Boca Raton, Florida
Players of American football from Florida
Boca Raton Community High School alumni