Marty Lyons

American football player (born 1957)
the Australian footballer

Martin Anthony Lyons (born January 15, 1957) is an American former professional football player who was a defensive tackle and defensive end for 11 seasons in the National Football League (NFL) during the 1970s and 1980s. Lyons played college football for the Alabama Crimson Tide, earning consensus All American honors. Selected in the first round of the 1979 NFL Draft, he played his entire professional career for the NFL's New York Jets. He was a member of the Jets' famed "New York Sack Exchange," the team's dominant front four in 1981 and 1982 that also featured Mark Gastineau, Abdul Salaam and Joe Klecko.

Lyons grew up in Pinellas Park, Florida and attended St. Petersburg Catholic High School.

Lyons attended the University of Alabama, where he played for coach Bear Bryant's Alabama Crimson Tide football team from 1975 to 1978. At Alabama, he had 202 tackles, 6 fumbles forced and 4 recovered. As a senior in 1978, he was recognized as a consensus first team All American, and helped lead the Crimson Tide to a National Championship in 1978. He was a key player in the set of fourth quarter plays known as "The Goal Line Stand" in the 1979 Sugar Bowl. It was Lyons that delivered what would become a famous line amongst Alabama fans just before the fourth down play of the sequence. When asked by Penn State quarterback Chuck Fusina how far the ball was from the goal line, Lyons replied, "'Bout a foot. You better pass." Alabama was 31 5 during his years as a player.

While a player with the Jets, a series of events — the birth of his eldest son, the passing of his father, and the passing of a little boy to whom Lyons had been a Big Brother — inspired him to establish the Marty Lyons Foundation to work with terminally ill children, providing them wishes. He won the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award in 1984 as a result of that work. In December 2011, Lyons was honored by the Heisman Trust as the recipient of the sixth annual Heisman Humanitarian Award for his work with his Foundation. Lyons is currently the Jets radio analyst and chairman of the Marty Lyons Foundation. He has been enshrined in the State of Alabama Hall of Fame (2000), Long Island's Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame (2001) and Nassau County Sports Hall of Fame (2002), Maryland Sports Hall of Fame (2004), the Tampa Bay Sports Club Hall of Fame (2007), and the College Football Hall of Fame (2011). Lyons received his bachelor's degree from the University of Alabama during winter commencement exercises on December 10, 2016. Lyons and his wife, Christine, have three children named Jesse, Megan, and Lucas. Rocky, his only child from his first marriage, is a physician in Alabama.