Season 8, Episode 31: Joe Klecko reflects on a Hall of Fame career

Thirty-five years after retiring from the NFL, Joe Klecko received the long-overdue news last month that he will be enshrined this summer in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, becoming the first former Temple player to receive the honor.

 

In a special episode of The Scoop, Klecko shared his remarkable life story with OwlScoop.com, one that started from modest beginnings in a working-class neighborhood in Chester, Pennsylvania just outside Philadelphia and grew to include stints as a truck driver, a Joe Frazier sparring partner, a semi-pro star with the Aston Knights and plenty of moments along the way in which he needed some encouragement from the most important people in his life, including his wife, Debbie, and the late former Temple coach Wayne Hardin, before he went on to a 12-year NFL career.

 

A self-described timid kid who initially walked away from the sport of football as a freshman at St. James High School for Boys, Klecko eventually honed the skill and strength to get the best of future Hall of Fame offensive linemen like Anthony Munoz and Dwight Stephenson and drop fellow Hall of Famers like Jim Kelly and Dan Marino en route to collecting 78 career sacks and four Pro Bowl nods as a member of the Jets’ famed “New York Sack Exchange.”

 

Among countless anecdotes, Klecko recalled memories of everything from living at Temple’s Johnson Hall to studying and getting the best of players like Marino to reflecting upon what it meant to see his son, Dan, play at his alma mater and go on to win three Super Bowls.