I was watching Mark Harmon in NCIS earlier this week.  Did you know he played football at UCLA?  Got me thinking.  Who are some other great athletes that have been decent actors?  Which means I’m not including Shaq.

Basically, I tried to take into consideration how great the athlete was in his heyday (couldn’t think of any females).  Then how good they were as an athlete.  So I came up with 7 actors who were decent (in some cases great) athletes.  Feel free to make your comments in the comment box.

Top 7 athletes turned actors in no particular order.

  1. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – Arguably the greatest center to ever play basketball and the NBA’s leading scorer, Kareem was an alright actor who had a couple of memorable roles.  His role in the movie Airplane was hilarious.  He had a brief cameo in Fletch playing himself, but his greatest role was probably fighting Bruce Lee in the movie Game of Death.

  2. Terry Bradshaw – Terry is one of two quarterbacks to have 4 super bowl rings.  He plays a good “aw shucks” person on film and must really be good friends with Burt Reynolds (who played football at Florida State) because he was in 3 of his movies.  His last role was a role where he had a nude scene.  Doesn’t really have his athlete physique anymore.

  3. Bubba Smith – Bubba was a stud football player at Michigan State and his pro career wasn’t bad either.  He played in what was dubbed the “greatest college game of the century” and became the number one pick in the draft in 1967.  His acting career was highlighted by the Miller Lite commercials and the Police Academy movies.

  4. Bob Uecker – Bob Uecker was a below average catcher in baseball.  He became a lot more famous as an actor which started with (once again) the Miller Lite commercials.  He managed a TV show that is famous with people my age, Mr. Belvedere.  But, his best role probably was as the Cleveland Indian’s announcer in the Major League movies.  “Just a bit outside.”

  5. Dean Cain – Cain became famous playing the role of Superman opposite Teri Hatcher in their ABC series.  Before that, he was a football player at Princeton.  I had once heard he left with the NCAA record for interceptions in a season.  Unfortunately, it didn’t get him much of a shot in the NFL, but hey, he got to act opposite Teri Hatcher for a few years.  Can you beat that?

  6. Merlin Olsen – This hall of famer played for the Los Angeles Rams and was a member of the Fearsome Foursome.  He tested his acting chops on Little House on the Prairie (a show I tried to never watch) and Father Murphy (a show I never watched).

  7. Jim Brown – Arguably the best football player ever, he retired at the peak of his career and went into acting.  One of his famous roles was in The Dirty Dozen.  He also starred in a movie opposite Racquel Welch.  Life couldn’t have been all that bad then after football.