Thomas Denning DeLeone (August 13, 1950 – May 22, 2016) 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 ...

center who played 13 seasons 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 ...

, with the

Cleveland Browns The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. Named after original coach and co-founder Paul Brown, they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (A ...

and Cincinnati Bengals. He grew up in Kent, Ohio and graduated from Theodore Roosevelt High School in 1968, where he was on the football, basketball, and track teams. He played college 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 ...

, where he was a starting center and an All-Big Ten and first-team All-American selection. He later went on to work as a criminal investigator with the

U.S. Department of the Treasury The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States, where it serves as an executive department. The department oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and t ...

rising to a Senior Special Agent position within the U.S. Customs Service. He worked in the US Customs Service, and he was a member of the FBI's

Joint Terrorism Task Force In the United States, the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) are locally-based multi-agency partnerships between various federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies tasked with investigating terrorism and terrorism-related crimes, led by the ...

in Salt Lake City, Utah, during the 2002 Olympic Games in Park City, Utah. In 2003, The U.S. Customs Service became a part of the newly created

Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-terr ...

and he retired from Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2007. He is a 2002 inductee of the Ohio State University Football Hall of Fame and a 2003 inductee of the Kent City Schools Hall of Fame. DeLeone, a key member of the 1980 Cleveland Browns Kardiac Kids, died on May 22, 2016, at his home in Park City, Utah following a five-year battle with brain cancer. He was 65. DeLeone was married, with three children. His middle child, Dean DeLeone, played football for Arizona State. Before his death, he worked as a substitute teacher at Park City High School and Treasure Mountain International School in Park City, where he had also volunteered as an assistant coach on the football team, sharing his love of football with the young students he coached and mentored.

References

1950 births 2016 deaths Players of American football from Ohio American football centers Cincinnati Bengals players Cleveland Browns players American Conference Pro Bowl players Ohio State Buckeyes football players Sportspeople from Kent, Ohio United States Customs Service personnel Deaths from brain cancer in the United States {{offensive-lineman-1950s-stub