Vernon Edward "Vern" Holland (June 28, 1948 – April 21, 1998) 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 ...

offensive tackle Offensive may refer to: * Offensive, the former name of the Dutch political party Socialist Alternative * Offensive (military), an attack * Offensive language ** Fighting words or insulting language, words that by their very utterance inflict inj ...

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 ...

for the

Cincinnati Bengals The Cincinnati Bengals are a professional American football team based in Cincinnati. The Bengals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC North, North division. The c ...

Detroit Lions The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) North Division. The team play their home games at Ford ...

and

New York Giants The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. ...

. Holland was born in

San Antonio, Texas ("Cradle of Freedom") , image_map = , mapsize = 220px , map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1= State , subdivision_name1 = Texas , subdivision_t ...

and grew up in

Sherman, Texas Sherman is a U.S. city in and the county seat of Grayson County, Texas. The city's population in 2020 was 43,645. It is one of the two principal cities in the Sherman–Denison metropolitan statistical area, and it is part of the Texoma region o ...

. He played

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 ...

Tennessee State University Tennessee State University (Tennessee State, Tenn State, or TSU) is a public historically black land-grant university in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1912, it is the only state-funded historically black university in Tenness ...

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the List of muni ...

. Holland was an all-American at Tennessee State, where he played from 1967 to 1970. He was drafted in the first round (15th overall) of the

1971 NFL Draft The 1971 National Football League draft was held January 28–29, 1971, at the Belmont Plaza Hotel in New York City, New York. The Boston Patriots, who did not officially change their name to New England Patriots until after the draft, used th ...

by the Bengals. Holland played right tackle in Cincinnati, where he anchored the offensive line throughout the 1970s. For nine years, from the 1971 season through the 1979 season, he played in 119 games for the Bengals, starting all but one of those. He played in every Bengals game in eight of his nine seasons in Cincinnati. In 1975, he was named second team All-American Football Conference (AFC) by

UPI United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th c ...

. He was also known for expensive clothes, carrying a briefcase because he considered football serious business, and the nickname "Suki." The Bengals cut Holland prior to the 1980 season, partly to make way for rookie (and future Hall-of-Famer)

Anthony Muñoz Michael Anthony Muñoz (born August 19, 1958) is an American former professional football player who was an offensive tackle for 13 seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the US ...

. In 1980, he played 10 games, starting five, for the New York Giants, then two games for the Detroit Lions. It was the final season of his 10-year NFL career. He later worked in the security department of the Nashville Arena. He died at age 49 of a heart attack on April 21, 1998, in Nashville. The

Ohio Valley Conference The Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference which operates in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern and Southeastern United States, Southeastern United States. It participates in NCAA Divisi ...

, of which Holland's alma mater, Tennessee State, is a member, annually awards the Vernon Holland Scholarship to promote the graduate-level studies of former OVC student-athletes interested in a career tied to sports.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Holland, Vernon 1948 births 1998 deaths American football offensive tackles Cincinnati Bengals players Detroit Lions players New York Giants players Players of American football from San Antonio Tennessee State Tigers football players Burials at Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery (Nashville, Tennessee)