Irvin Lee Pankey (born February 15, 1958) 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 wit ...

offensive lineman In gridiron football, a lineman is a player who specializes in play at the line of scrimmage. The linemen of the team currently in possession of the ball are the offensive line, while linemen on the opposing team are the defensive line. A numb ...

who played twelve 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 ma ...

, mainly for the

Los Angeles Rams The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Greater Los Angeles, Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC Wes ...

. He played

tight end The tight end (TE) is a position in American football, arena football, and Canadian football, on the offense (sports), offense. The tight end is often a hybrid position with the characteristics and roles of both an offensive lineman and a wide ...

and offensive tackle at

Penn State #Redirect Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a public state-related land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvania. Founded in 1855 as the Farmers' High ...

and was a

team captain In team sport, captain is a title given to a member of the team. The title is frequently honorary, but in some cases the captain may have significant responsibility for strategy and teamwork while the game is in progress on the field. In eithe ...

in 1979. He attended Aberdeen High School in Aberdeen, Maryland.

Personal life

During his playing career at Penn State, he reached out to Betsy Sailor, a student who had been raped by then-Penn State player

Todd Hodne Todd Steven Hodne (April 23, 1959 – April 29, 2020) was an American football linebacker and convicted felon from Wantagh, Long Island, New York. Hodne gained notoriety for a series of sexual assaults he committed while attending Penn State Univ ...

in 1978, and had experienced harassment after having testified against Hodne at his trial. In a 2022 ESPN story on Hodne, who would sexually assault nearly a dozen other women before being convicted of murder, Sailor recalled Pankey telling her, "I just wanted to let you know that I was in the courtroom today and I listened to what you had to say. And I believe every word that you said. And, you will never have to be afraid, or be alone again. I will be by your side." Pankey and Sailor would lose contact after they graduated from Penn State, but would be reunited while the ESPN story was being researched. Pankey has twin sons who played college football for Oregon State; Keith Pankey played

linebacker Linebacker (LB) is a playing position in gridiron football. Linebackers are members of the defensive team, and line up three to five yards behind the line of scrimmage and the defensive linemen. They are the "middle ground" of defenders, pl ...

, and his brother, Kevin, was a tight end. He has a daughter, Kiley, who attended Mt. Whitney High School in

Visalia, California Visalia ( ) is a city in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley of California. The population was 141,384 as per the 2020 census. Visalia is the fifth-largest city in the San Joaquin Valley, the 42nd most populous in California, and 192nd in ...

. Pankey served as a professor and offensive line coach at the

College of the Sequoias College of the Sequoias (COS) is a public two-year community college in Visalia, California. The college is named for the Giant Sequoia trees native to the nearby Sierra Nevada mountain range. History College of the Sequoias was originally esta ...

in Visalia, California. Pankey also helps out at football camps such as Linemen Inc.

References

1958 births Living people People from Aberdeen, Maryland Sportspeople from the Baltimore metropolitan area Players of American football from Maryland American football offensive tackles Penn State Nittany Lions football players Los Angeles Rams players Indianapolis Colts players {{offensive-lineman-1950s-stub