Giachetti to be inducted into Juniata College Sports Hall of Fame
It could be said that former Uniontown defensive back Brian Giachetti has come so close in his football career. Then again, it could easily be said that he has come so far.
Giachetti is perhaps the most famous player on the Pittsburgh Colts, a minor league football team in the North American Football League. He plays for no pay and little glory in front of crowds of several hundred at Honus Wagner Field in Carnegie.
But he’s the Colts’ leading receiver and has been with them for every one of their seven seasons. He has played football professionally in the National Indoor Football League for three seasons. And this October 12, he’ll be one of the first football figures in the Juniata College Sports Hall of Fame.
“It’s a very great honor. I think the first year they had a Hall of Fame was 1995 and they only take in five inductees every year. I was surprised I got in,” he said.
If you’re a Red Raiders fan and you can’t seem to recall Giachetti’s name, don’t fret. He last played high school football 16 years ago and only started for one season, Uniontown’s 3-7 campaign in 1987.
“That year defensively I led the conference with seven interceptions. Defensively I had more highlights than offensively,” said the wide receiver-defensive back.
The reason he sat on the bench for three years was his size. He stood just 5-9 and weighed 160 pounds at Uniontown, a frame earned him the nickname “The Flea.”
But the season he had did turn some heads, among them local restaurateur Sal Mercandante, a 1972 graduate of Juniata.
“He suggested some teammates go up there and check it out,” Giachetti said. Among them were Ernie Magalotti, a linebacker at Uniontown who would suit up at strong safety for the Indians and defensive tackle Brian Hall.
Giachetti wound up signing with Juniata along with his two teammates. After initially being slotted at free safety he was moved to cornerback late in his freshman year and became a four-year starter there.
In his junior year of 1990, Giachetti led the Indians to a 7-2-1 record, featuring a 30-30 tie with eventual Division III national champion Allegheny, with eight interceptions. He would win Middle Atlantic Conference all-star status that year, as well as his senior year when he picked off five more passes and was selected first-team All-American in the Division III ranks by Hansen’s Football Gazette.
“I was known for hitting,” Giachetti said, as “The Flea” had grown to 5-10 and 175 pounds. With a 4.5 40-yard dash he had become a fringe NFL prospect and received feelers from the New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys.
He went undrafted, but didn’t give up on his dream. Following his 1992 graduation with a degree in psychology he dabbled as an assistant coach at Albert Gallatin High School and worked as everything from a bartender to a house painter while attending free agent tryout camps. Finally, in 1995, he hooked on with the Hamilton Tiger Cats of the Canadian Football League and was signed to a two-year contract.
It was not to be. “The American Division folded that year. That killed me,” he said. “You’re only allowed 20 Americans in the CFL.” Prior to the Tiger-Cats first preseason game against Doug Flutie’s Calgary Roughriders he was released.
He came back to become a salesman for Coca-Cola, but around this time minor league football, where the players are unpaid, was being rejuvenated. Ed Brosky, a practice player for the 1976 Pittsburgh Panthers, had helped form a team called the Pittsburgh Outlaws, and Giachetti was one of his first players in 1996.
The Outlaws would matriculate into the Pittsburgh Colts the next year and for the first time in his career “The Flea” was playing with players who fans might have heard of.
Asked now to play wide receiver as well as defensive back, Giachetti was catching passes from the likes of Sal Genilla, Pitt’s starting signal caller for their Bluebonnet Bowl squad of 1987. He was a teammate of former NFL All-Pro lineman Carlton Haselrig and former Pitt star and Big East Offensive MVP Billy West.
According to Brosky, the Colts’ head coach, Giachetti’s presence on the Colts was that of Billy Joel’s Piano Man, “Man, what are you doing here?”
“We tried everything to get him a shot,” he said of the Colts’ all-time leading receiver. “He has the best pair of hands in this league. We had him bench press 225 pounds 22 straight times for a scout.”
In 1998, when the Colts had perhaps their best team, “The Flea” scored 10 touchdowns rushing, receiving and returning despite playing only half the regular season for the 12-3 Colts. He suffered a major knee injury that year but returned for the National Minor Pro Football League playoffs, however, where he had the most memorable play of his football career.
“We were playing in the playoffs against the Columbus Fire and down by a touchdown with 20 seconds left,” Giachetti said. “All the quarterback had to do was fall on the ball, but the quarterback ran a sweep.”
Shades of Herman Edwards followed. “I missed the tackle, but John Harper, the strong safety, stripped the ball. It bounced in my hands and I had a 50 yard fumble recovery for the winning touchdown.”
But after the game, Giachetti discovered he’d come back too soon. He had to have emergency surgery on his knee and a 12-inch abscess was removed. “Nobody told me what was wrong. I had a fever of 102 and had a staph infection.”
Still he came back, finally latching on with a professional football team, the Steel Valley Smash of the Indoor Football League, in the spring of 1999 for $200 a game. But on his first tackle he opened up the wound in his knee. “It had to be cleaned every day. That’s what I’m known for in Wheeling,” Giachetti said.
But the Colts were always there. “Every year I said I wasn’t going to play, but when they got Sal I said I wanted to catch touchdowns from someone like that,” he said. “You saw Carlton play on Sundays for the Steelers and then it’s ‘Wow! He’s with us!'”
So Giachetti came back for the second half of the 1999 season and stayed on as the Colts played for the league championship in every season from 1998-2000, finally winning the NMPFL title in 2000 with a 47-7 win over the Cleveland Cardinals.
When it appeared the Colts were going to become an indoor football team following the season, Giachetti followed suit, hooking up with the old Johnstown Jackals in 2000 and the J-Dogs of the renamed National Indoor Football League in 2001. Then in the summer he’d hook up with the Colts and catch passes from the likes of D.J. Dinkins, now a wide receiver for the New York Giants, and Jamont Kind, a former Ringgold quarterback who played defensive back for Syracuse in the late 1990s.
As of today, the Colts are 6-0 and ranked eighth in the Central Region among semi-pro teams by minorleaguefootballnews.com. Giachetti is Kind’s primary receiver and also starts at free safety.
“Probably defensive wise this is the best team I’ve been on here,” said Giachetti. The Colts have posted four straight shutouts. “Offense wise we’re one or two linemen away.”
Around this time Giachetti also returns to his duties as an assistant football coach for Giebel Catholic High School. He’s 33 years old. How much longer can “The Flea” continue to play?
“I say it’s my last year, but I don’t know. Every year spring comes around, I’m still in shape, Coach Brosky calls and I’m there.”