Randy Mattingly has never met a stranger, which may explain why so many people are celebrating the fact that the former University of Evansville gridiron great is joining the Indiana Football Hall of Fame.
“He’s so down to earth,” says Mike Horn, who is organizing Mattingly’s invite-only induction ceremony Oct. 16 at UE. “He’s a great ambassador for UE. Everybody always wants to know if Randy’s around.”
Horn played linebacker at F.J. Reitz High School and UE in the 1970s. Four years younger than Mattingly, Horn became acquainted with him when Mattingly returned to Evansville in the mid-1970s after finishing his pro career in the Canadian Football League. “He’ll discuss anything with you. He may be on topic, and he may not,” Horn jokes. “He was a great all-around athlete.”
John Hamilton, a longtime local attorney who recently retired, was Mattingly’s rival in elementary school and then high school, when Hamilton played quarterback for Mater Dei and Mattingly for the former Rex Mundi. “Randy was an outstanding athlete and is an outstanding person,” Hamilton says. “We might have won the City (Championship) in football and the sectional in basketball if not for Randy Mattingly.”
Mattingly is one of 21 players, and one of three from Southwestern Indiana, voted into 2026’s HOF class by the Indiana Football Coaches Association Past President’s Committee in March. His regional counterparts include 1993 Castle High School graduate Graig Hoffman and late 1972 Lincoln High School alum David Carter from Vincennes, Indiana.
Mattingly’s younger brothers, Mike and Don, are scheduled to speak at the Oct. 16 ceremony honoring him. “Obviously, we’ll tell stories,” Mattingly says. “I’m really pleased that I’ll see all the guys that I played with.”
Road to the Pros
A multisport athlete at Rex Mundi, Mattingly earned a football scholarship to Florida State University. But tragedy struck in August 1969 just as he began two-a-day practice sessions as a freshman with the Seminoles. Older brother Jerry, 23 and a husband and father of two, was killed in a construction accident on Interstate 64 near Griffin, Indiana. Mattingly left Florida State and enrolled at UE. “There was a lot of turmoil when I came back,” he says. “With all the grief I was going through, I needed help, and I came home.”
As quarterback, he starred for Aces football, earning All-Indiana Collegiate Conference honors in 1971 and 1972 while also playing baseball and basketball. He qualified for the NCAA nationals while throwing the javelin for the track and field team. UE discontinued its football program after 1997.
Mattingly was a fourth-round draft choice of the National Football League’s Cleveland Browns in 1973. A little in awe at first, he says he looked at his teammates and realized, “They are the same as I was.”
After being cut at the end of training camp, Mattingly bounced around as a practice squad member for the Browns, Chicago Bears, Buffalo Bills, and Cincinnati Bengals. Practice squad members are often part of the scout team, emulating upcoming opponents’ styles of play in game preparation, but they do not dress for games.
Tired of a lack of playing time, Mattingly in 1974 joined the CFL, adapting to its more wide-open style of play. “It was a different game and a little different culture,” says Mattingly, who completed 35 of 65 passes for 553 yards and four touchdowns with six interceptions for the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 1974 and ’75.
Signed by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 1976, Mattingly was the team’s punter. Upon being traded to the British Columbia Lions the same year, Mattingly had had enough and returned home. “I was with four teams in the NFL and never got on the field. It was the same way in the CFL. I got to spot start and back up (quarterbacks) and punted,” he says.
Back in Evansville, he finished his history and political science degree in UE and spent three years coaching football and baseball at Harrison High School before moving into the private sector. Mattingly worked at electronics manufacturer Zenith for “four or five years,” he says, but did not follow the company when the local branch moved to El Paso, Texas, in the mid-1980s. He worked in management at aluminum supplier Alcoa for 30 years, retiring in 2016. He and his wife, Melissa, have been married 46 years and raised a son, Will, and a daughter, Erin. The couple resides in Henderson, Kentucky.
Family Sports Legacy
The four Mattingly boys — Jerry, Randy, Mike, and Don — and their elder sister, Judie, lived in a modest, three-bedroom home in the Diamond-Stringtown neighborhood. Their mother, Mary, was a homemaker. Their father, Bill, was a mailman. “He was patient with everybody,” Randy says. “He was a quiet and kind man.”
Their family built a sports legacy. If an older brother needed someone to play pitch and catch, a younger brother was usually available. Randy, who was part of the 1980-81 class inducted into the UE Athletics Hall of Fame, says he benefited from the roughly five-year separation between his brothers. Jerry, born in 1946, was the eldest; after Randy came Mike, then Don. “When Jerry was 11 or 12, I was 6 or 7 and I would watch his games,” Randy says. “I had a chance to be an observer before I was a participant.”
As the second-eldest brother, Randy would play catch with Jerry practicing baseball. As a wide receiver for Rex Mundi football, Jerry was the main target for Rex Mundi teammate and future Miami Dolphins quarterback Bob Griese. “Jerry was a junior when Bob was a senior,” Randy says. “They played three sports together. They hung around together. They double-dated and cruised around together.”
Randy was a batboy when his older brother and Griese led the American Legion Funkhouser Post 8 baseball team to the 1963 Legion World Series. Griese never forgot the relationship. In the early 1970s, he guided the Miami Dolphins to consecutive Super Bowl victories as well as a perfect 17-0 overall record in 1972, but he was injured and in street clothes before a preseason game against the Chicago Bears on Aug. 18, 1973. Before the game, Griese made a special point to walk across the field and seek out his high school teammate’s little brother.
“He didn’t say a word to anyone else, and we had a conversation for two or three minutes,” Randy says. “He apologized for not being at Jerry’s funeral because he was in training camp. He asked how my parents were doing and how we were dealing with our grief.”
Griese’s interaction gave Randy instant credibility with his Bears teammates. Later, at the Tri-State Hot Stove League’s first Night of Memories youth sports fundraiser in 2000, Griese, a College and Pro Football Hall of Famer, enjoyed spending extensive time with Randy and his wife, Melissa.
Jerry began the Mattingly family’s legacy of athletic excellence. In addition to lifting Rex Mundi to the 1964 Indiana High School Athletic Association state basketball semifinals and earning all-state honors, he started two years on UE’s basketball team but was not a member of the Aces’ 1965 College Division national championship team because freshmen were ineligible to play varsity then. Younger brother Mike became disenchanted after playing baseball and basketball for two years at then- Indiana State University Evansville and left school.
Don, the youngest, led Reitz Memorial High School to the 1978 state baseball championship while starring at quarterback in football and point guard in basketball. Selected by the New York Yankees in the 1979 Major League Baseball draft, he became the 1985 American League Most Valuable Player and a six-time all-star playing first base before retiring in 1995. Don continued his MLB career as a coach and/or manager for the Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, Miami Marlins, and Toronto Blue Jays. As interim manager, Don guided the 2026 Philadelphia Phillies to a National League wild-card playoff berth alongside his second son, Preston, the club’s general manager. Originally hired as bench coach, Don had another year on that contract, but the Phillies announced Oct. 14 that they’d signed him to a new two-year deal as full-time manager starting with the 2027 season.
But this week, it’s Randy who is in the spotlight as extended family and lifelong friends reunite for his Hall of Fame induction ceremony. “Everybody wants to be around Randy,” Horn says. “Everybody loves him. He’s a good family man.”
