They didn’t come much better in Ohio’s high school football trenches in the Fall of 1972. In fact, no one in the state was better that season in the eyes of the Buckeye State’s sportswriters, who voted the Cleveland Cathedral Latin High prep star Ohio’s High School Lineman of the Year to go along with his national All-American honors. Those honors brought the nation’s premier college coaches scurrying to Cleveland, with Southern California eventually carrying off the prize to Los Angeles. By the third game of his freshman season with the Trojans, Jeter was a starter, an almost unprecedented achievement at USC. In 1975 he was selected to some All-American teams and in 1976 he repeated this time as a consensus first team defensive tackle. In the subsequent NFL draft in 1977, the New Giants tabbed him with the fifth pick of the first round. He went on to play six seasons with the Giants, before returning to California to play six more years with the Los Angeles Rams recording 11 sacks in 1985 and a career high 11½ sacks in 1988, before finishing his career with the New England Patriots in 1989. He subsequently returned to Greater Cleveland where he has made his home in North Royalton and has frequently been heard as a football analyst on Cleveland radio.

Deceased 2016