Randy Reutershan (born June 30, 1955) 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 ...

player who performed in a single season 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 ...

for the

Pittsburgh Steelers The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh. The Steelers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) North division. Founded in , the Stee ...

. He was a member of teams that won a

college football national championship A national championship in the highest level of college football in the United States, currently the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), is a designation awarded annually by various organizations to their selection of the best coll ...

and

Super Bowl XIII Super Bowl XIII was an American football game between the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Pittsburgh Steelers and the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Dallas Cowboys to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion ...

over the

Dallas Cowboys The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divis ...

Early life

Reutershan was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

to Warren and Doris Reutershan. He attended

Mahwah High School Mahwah High School (MHS) is a four-year comprehensive public high school serving students from Mahwah in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States, serving students in ninth through twelfth grades as the only secondary school of the Mahwah To ...

Mahwah, New Jersey Mahwah is the northernmost and largest municipality by geographic area () in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the population of the township was 25,487, a decline of 403 from the 25,890 counted in ...

where he earned

letters Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...

three years in football,

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

and

track Track or Tracks may refer to: Routes or imprints * Ancient trackway, any track or trail whose origin is lost in antiquity * Animal track, imprints left on surfaces that an animal walks across * Desire path, a line worn by people taking the short ...

Football career

Reutershan attended the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the univers ...

. In his junior season he was a wide receiver and special teams ace on the Panthers team which won the national championship. He had 17 catches for 311 yards in his senior season at Pitt in 1977. His tenacity as a special teams player, particularly his love of tackling on the coverage team, earned him the nickname "the Rat." His college coach,

Johnny Majors John Terrill Majors (May 21, 1935June 3, 2020) was an American professional football player and college coach. A standout halfback at the University of Tennessee, he was an All-American in 1956 and a two-time winner of the Southeastern Conf ...

called Reutershan, "the most dynamic special teams performer I have ever seen." Reutershan was selected by the

in the sixth round of the

1978 NFL Draft The 1978 NFL draft was the procedure by which National Football League teams selected amateur college football players. It is officially known as the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting. The draft was held May 2–3, 1978, at the Roosevelt Hot ...

. He made the team as 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 ...

after switching back and forth from wide receiver during training camp. He played in eleven games in his rookie season, contributing primarily on special teams. His season was cut short in mid-November by a single vehicle roll-over automobile accident that left him with severe head injuries for which he was hospitalized for a full month. Although he would eventually recover from his injuries, he was advised to discontinue his professional football career. Reutershan returned to his alma mater, Pittsburgh, as a wide receivers coach under

Jackie Sherrill Jackie Wayne Sherrill (born November 28, 1943) is a former American football player and coach. He was the head football coach at Washington State University (1976), the University of Pittsburgh (1977–1981), Texas A&M University (1982–1988) ...

in 1979.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reutershan, Randy 1955 births Living people American football wide receivers Mahwah High School alumni Pittsburgh Steelers players Pittsburgh Panthers football players Sportspeople from Bergen County, New Jersey Players of American football from New York City People from Mahwah, New Jersey