Charles Puleri
| No. 7 | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Position: | Quarterback | ||||||||||||
| Personal information | |||||||||||||
| Born: | March 1, 1969 New York, New York, U.S. | ||||||||||||
| Height: | 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) | ||||||||||||
| Weight: | 195 lb (88 kg) | ||||||||||||
| Career information | |||||||||||||
| High school: | New York (NY) Lehman | ||||||||||||
| College: | New Mexico State | ||||||||||||
| Undrafted: | 1993 | ||||||||||||
| Career history | |||||||||||||
| * Offseason and/or practice squad member only | |||||||||||||
| Career Arena League statistics | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Charles "Charley" Puleri (born March 1, 1969) is a former professional football quarterback.
Career
[edit]Puleri signed to the Sacramento Gold Miners in 1993. He spent the vast majority of his career in the minor leagues, playing at various points in his career with the Miami Hooters, Texas Terror, Iowa Barnstormers, Detroit Fury, Buffalo Destroyers, London Monarchs and, during the 2000 preseason, the Dallas Cowboys. Unusually for a quarterback, Puleri played ironman in arena football, seeing limited playing time on defense and special teams.[1][2]
Puleri is best known for his time with the New York/New Jersey Hitmen of the XFL. In 2001, Puleri, a native of New York City, signed with his hometown team. Puleri would be the starting quarterback in the XFL's first game, leading the Hitmen against the Las Vegas Outlaws on national television. Puleri's tenure as the Hitmen's starting quarterback proved to be a disastrous embarrassment for both him and the league as a whole, as he was repeatedly sacked and turned the ball over numerous times, making the league's level of talent look bad and partially prompting the mass decline in viewers as the season progressed. After a short quarterback controversy, Puleri was benched in favor of Wally Richardson (a former NFL backup for the Baltimore Ravens and Atlanta Falcons) during the second week of the season.[3] Puleri's struggles were later attributed to the ball's slippery texture, which was later solved by using sandpaper and wirebrush to roughen the surface.[4]
References
[edit]- ^ "Charles Puleri". Arenafan.com. Retrieved August 2, 2012.
- ^ Associated Press (June 9, 2000). "Cowboys sign QB Cunningham". Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Lubbock Online. Retrieved August 2, 2012.
- ^ "NY/NJ Hitmen Roster: Charles Puleri". All-xfl.com. Retrieved August 2, 2012.
- ^ "How the XFL solved the slippery ball problem with sandpaper". ESPN via Youtube. January 25, 2018. Retrieved February 23, 2020. (excerpt from This Was The XFL)
 | This biographical article relating to an American football quarterback born in the 1960s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
- 1969 births
- Living people
- New Mexico State Aggies football players
- Miami Hooters players
- Texas Terror players
- Iowa Barnstormers players
- New Jersey Red Dogs players
- Detroit Fury players
- Buffalo Destroyers players
- New York/New Jersey Hitmen players
- London Monarchs players
- Players of American football from the Bronx
- Sacramento Gold Miners players
- American football quarterbacks
- 20th-century American sportsmen
- American football quarterback, 1960s birth stubs