Profile · Kenosha, Wisconsin
Alan Dante Ameche ("The Horse")
Heisman-winning fullback from Kenosha (cousin of actor Don Ameche; birthplace sometimes disputed as Italy vs. Kenosha)
$20 million
Alan Dante Ameche—“the Horse”—was Wisconsin’s first Heisman Trophy winner and the Baltimore Colts fullback who scored the overtime touchdown in the 1958 NFL Championship, the sudden-death game still called the greatest ever played. Kenosha raised the name; Madison and Baltimore made the legend. Standard references place his birth in Kenosha on June 1, 1933, as Lino Dante Amici in an Italian immigrant factory household that spent a stretch of his early childhood back in Italy. At sixteen he decided the name was not tough enough and became Alan. In 1950 at Bradford High he scored 108 points for an undefeated Kenosha team that put up more touchdowns than its opponents scored points. He also set city records in the 100, relays, and shot put. At Wisconsin he played both ways in the single-platoon era, ran for 133 yards in the Badgers’ first Rose Bowl (1953), and in 1954 won the Heisman as a fullback—almost never the position that takes that trophy. Teammates called him the Horse because he worked practice the way a draft animal works a field. Baltimore drafted him third overall. He was NFL rushing champion and Rookie of the Year in 1955, then the overtime hero of 1958. An Achilles injury in 1960 ended the playing career at twenty-seven. With Gino Marchetti and two friends he opened a hamburger stand that became Gino’s, hundreds of shops, later sold to Marriott. He handed his Heisman to Wisconsin at a 1984 halftime and died in Houston on August 8, 1988, of a heart attack, at fifty-five. He was a cousin of Kenosha actor Don Ameche—different famous Ameche, same town.