Edmondo Guido Armando Franco was an American professional football player for the Boston Yanks of the National Football League.
19 Facts About Ed Franco
1.
2.
Ed Franco played college football for the Fordham Rams and earned fame as one of the legendary Seven Blocks of Granite.
3.
Ed Franco was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1980.
4.
Ed Franco was the youngest of nine children born to Italian immigrants, Nicola and Filomena Franco, on Christopher Street, in New York City.
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The family later moved to Jersey City, New Jersey, where Ed Franco began to display his extraordinary athletic ability.
6.
Ed Franco earned All-State honors at William L Dickinson High School as both a guard for the football team and a catcher for baseball.
7.
Ed Franco played guard and tackle for the legendary "Seven Blocks of Granite," coached by the Sleepy Jim Crowley, one of the famed Four Horsemen of Notre Dame.
8.
Ed Franco played alongside the famous Vince Lombardi, the right guard for the Blocks of Granite.
9.
Ed Franco served as captain of the East team in the 1938 East-West Shrine Game.
10.
Ed Franco had a brief professional career: He was a fifth-round selection of the Cleveland Rams in the 1938 NFL draft, but didn't stay with the team.
11.
On December 9,1939, Ed Franco married his sweetheart Anna May McGinley, a nursing student at Bayonne Nursing School.
12.
Ed Franco decided not to continue his professional career since at that time football paid little.
13.
Ed Franco returned to Fordham as a line coach for six years, where he helped the Rams gain a Cotton Bowl Classic bid in 1941 and a Sugar Bowl bid in 1942.
14.
In 1944, Ed Franco returned to the NFL and won the starting tackle job in his first game as a member of the Boston Yanks.
15.
Ed Franco worked as the eastern scout for the Green Bay Packers and the Washington Redskins along with coach and close friend Lombardi.
16.
Ed Franco later owned several successful businesses in Jersey City and Secaucus and worked for the Meadowlands Racetrack.
17.
Ed Franco died on November 18,1992, at the age of 77.
18.
Ed Franco was survived by his three children, Margaret, Ned, and Rosemary, six grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.
19.
In 1980, Ed Franco was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.