As a teenager, Glenn Martinez, an Army brat born in Germany, played the same two sports that many of his friends played: basketball and baseball.
The idea that he would one day play college and professional football – and would become the first person named Martinez to ever make an NFL roster – could not have been farther from his mind.
“The majority of the places that we lived were either European countries or Latin American countries,” Martinez said. “They really didn’t have American football. No one knew American football. We didn’t play American football.”
Even in high school in Florida, football was a complete afterthought, until the day serendipity interceded.
“We played basketball every Sunday in my 10th grade, going into my 11th grade year,” Martinez said. “We’d play at the local elementary school. And it was just basically a dunk fest for us because the rims were low, and we would go out there and have fun. … But the majority of the guys that I play with, they all played football.”
Then one day, his friends had a 7-on-7 football tournament, and Martinez went to watch.
“I was in my basketball shoes, had a basketball in my hand,” Martinez said. “I sat the stands.”
His friends tried to coax him onto the field. Martinez’s answer was succinct: Nope.
“I was scared,” he said. “I was a little skinny Puerto Rican kid that’d never really played football. … I was athletic, but I just – I was scared to get hit.”
Then the coach went into the stands, assuring Martinez he wouldn’t be hit, promising he would tell him where to go and what to do.
Grudgingly, Martinez went onto the field.
“I did really good,” he said. “I had, like, two touchdowns; I had an interception.”
The coach spent the entire summer trying to persuade Martinez to join the high school team in the fall. Martinez was reluctant and so were his parents, who worried that it was too rough, that he’d get hurt.
Finally, he agreed to join the junior varsity team, and he played his first game.
“[The coach] brought me in the office the next day, asked me how I felt,” Martinez said. “I was like, no, it felt good, man. He goes, good, ‘cause you’re suiting up tonight, too. And he moved me up to varsity that same night. And the first ball I touched in varsity was a kickoff return.”
He took that return for a touchdown.
From there, Martinez played college football at Division II Saginaw Valley State in Michigan, where his name still figures in the school’s record book. He’s second all-time in average yards per catch, sixth in receiving yards, seventh in receptions and touchdown catches, ninth in punt return yards, and 10th in receptions per game and all-purpose yards.
Undrafted, he spent a season in NFL Europe, then caught on with the Detroit Lions, bouncing back and forth between the active roster and the practice squad, played for the Denver Broncos in 2007 and 2008, and wound up his career with the Houston Texans.
Hispanic players in the NFL
That Martinez – whose parents are from Puerto Rico – made it to the NFL at all is a feat.
According to various reports in recent years, Hispanics account for roughly 1% of players on NFL rosters – some years a little more, some less.
That’s starkly different from the United States as a whole, where Hispanics make up about 17% of the population.
It’s something the NFL is working to change.
The league’s “Por La Cultura” program, a partnership with the Hispanic Heritage Foundation and the Hispanic Alliance for Career Enhancement, highlights NFL players, coaches and staff members. The league has an Instagram page (El Snap), a YouTube channel and Twitter feed (both dubbed MundoNFL) as well as a website (nfl.com/espanol) that are all aimed at Latino fans.
In addition, a number of teams have their own initiatives, things like flag football and camps, that are aimed at reaching the Hispanic community.
In Martinez’s eyes, explaining the disparity is simple: In the Hispanic communities he grew up in, nobody even thought about football.
“In the majority of Latin American countries, it’s soccer, baseball – those are the big two,” he said. “Your families, they come over here and migrate over and come for a better life. That’s all they know. They don't know football. There is no football league in Puerto Rico or Columbia or any of those South American countries. But you'll see a soccer ball anywhere. You'll see a basketball or a baseball anywhere.”
'It starts at the youth level'
Changing the dynamic means getting more kids into the sport, he said.
“It starts at the youth level,” he said. “It can be something as simple as flag football. We're teaching the kids to understand the game, love the game. My daughter is 9, and she wants to play flag football because her friends play flag football.”
Martinez has an ally in Joe Ramirez, the head coach of the Ducks, a team of 8- and 9-year-olds in the Thornton Junior Football League.
That so few Hispanics play in the NFL is a bit of surprise, he said.
“You come out here to this junior league, I mean – half of them, if not more – Hispanic,” Ramirez said as his team went through drills at a recent practice.
But when asked to name professional Hispanic players he remembers, he initially could think of only one: Hall of Fame lineman Anthony Munoz of the Cincinnati Bengals.
Increasing the number of Hispanics in professional football is something he said he would love to see.
“Especially from the standpoint of a fan, I would love to be able to buy a jersey with my last name on it,” he said. “That would be pretty awesome.”
To date, only two people who share his last name have made it to the NFL, including Manny Ramirez, an offensive lineman who played for the Broncos and Lions.
Joe Ramirez said his love of football began in childhood.
“It was a way to kind of forget where I came from, you know, for two hours at practice or two hours of the game time,” he said. “It was fun to just block everything out and just, no matter what street I grew up on or what bad area I was in, it was a way to release it and just have fun and be a kid.”
Now he’s coaching his own son, Demetris Ramirez, who his teammates call “Meech.”
An outside linebacker and offensive lineman, he summed up his own football dream in four word: “Being in the NFL.”
Boys like him offer hope for his dad – and Glenn Martinez – that one day Hispanics will make up a larger percentage of professional football rosters.
“I hope to get him there, or that he gets there with his talent,” Joe Ramirez said. “But yeah, that would be awesome to see more people with our last name. We see it across baseball … Ramirezes, Ayalas or any of the Hispanic names. Lopez. You know, you name them. Martinez.”
Glenn Martinez's best Broncos moment
Glenn Martinez is proud to have been one Latino who made it.
“When my career was done, that's when I started to reflect on that and see it as, I … did something that not a lot of people have done,” he said.
And he’s proud of his greatest moment in a football uniform.
> Video below: Extended interview with Glenn Martinez:
It was Nov. 19, 2007, a Monday night, the Broncos against the Tennessee Titans before a big crowd in Denver.
He was playing special teams when he dropped back to field a punt with a little less than four minutes to go in the first quarter.
As he waited for the snap, he saw that one of the Titans players was in motion – his signal that the punter was going to try to kick to that side of the field.
“I remember cheating over, and he kicked that ball, and as coming down, I remember peeking and seeing that there was a little bit of a gap, but I didn't think anything of it,” Martinez said. “So, I took it, and I just took that first step there and shot – tried to get into the gap.”
He made it into that hole, juking a Titans player in the process.
“When he had a chance to tackle me, and I gave him a move like that, and he, his knees buckled, and he just fell,” Martinez said.
As Martinez ran, he looked at the big screen, “like man please, don’t let this guy catch me – please don’t let this guy catch me. And I remember just getting in that end zone and just feeling relief, like just feeling like a weight off the shoulder.”
It was the moment of his time in professional football.
“That is the one play I’ll always remember,” Martinez said.
He’ll remember it with the pride in knowing that relatively few people whose heritage is his made it as far as he did in football.
Contact 9Wants to Know investigator Kevin Vaughan with tips about this or any story: kevin.vaughan@9news.com or 303-871-1862.
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