There may be a select few Knight fans or alumni somewhere out there with more connections to UCF football than Bill Giovanetti.
But it's hard to imagine there are many.
Giovanetti, originally from Casselberry, Florida (he played his senior season at Lyman High School in Longwood), jumped in on the ground floor of football at UCF, starring for the Knights in their first four seasons on the gridiron (1979-82). In some ways that seems more than four decades ago, considering how far UCF has come.
Yet the notion of a start-up athletic opportunity absolutely appealed to Giovanetti.
"I knew I wanted to keep playing football out of high school, but I had minimal opportunities," he says. "When UCF created the program, it just made sense to stay home and join this newly created program. We started from scratch, it was a new opportunity, a legacy-type thing. It also made sense financially for us, so I stayed in town and went to UCF."
He made the most of it.
One of the pillars of that early football program at UCF, he started at linebacker for that first team at the tender age of 17. From 1979-82, he started all 37 of the games he played. He led the Knights in tackles three of his four years and set a school record for career tackles that lasted more than 10 years.
His career tackles mark (429) stands in second place all-time (only Rick Hamilton has more with 443 in 1989-92), and he is tied for the school record for tackles in a game (23 in 1979 in a season-ending home field win versus Morehouse). He earned honorable mention Associated Press All-America honors for his efforts in the 1981 season (116 tackles and a team-high four interceptions) and went on to sign with the Tampa Bay Bandits of the USFL after his UCF career.
In 2000 Giovanetti joined former Knight receiver Sean Beckton as the first football players to be inducted into the UCF Athletics Hall of Fame. In 2004 the Orlando Sentinel named him to UCF's Silver Anniversary team (one of three linebackers).
"After UCF I signed a free-agent contract with the Bandits and tried that for two years," he says. "But a 5-10, 220-pound linebacker doesn't work in the big leagues. So I had to find a career."
Giovanetti began working for T.G. Lee, an Orlando dairy that opened its doors in 1925 and is situated in what is known as the Milk District east of the downtown area.
"I started delivering milk door to door—restaurants, retail, small format—and I worked my way through the system. Became a sales rep, branch manager, division manager, vice president of sales, general manager and now I'm a group vice president over the Southeast (under the Dairy Farms of America and Dean Foods umbrellas)."
Along the way Bill's son Billy played football for the Knights in 2009-12 (21 career starts at fullback and a touchdown reception in 2012 at Ohio State) and son Nick did the same as a defensive back in 2009.
Bill and his '79 Fighting Knight teammates—plus head coach Don Jonas--have a consistent tailgate presence for UCF home games at the Bounce House. That group hasn't forgotten its roots—when Giovanetti and his teammates "committed" to the UCF football program via a sign-up sheet, wore their own shoes to practice and barely had any locker room facilities to change clothes.
Despite the challenges, that '79 team finished 6-2 in NCAA Division III and averaged an NCAA record 11,240 fans per game, at that time about the same size as the UCF student body. That first year Jonas still had a full-time job but came over on fall weekdays to conduct practice. A year later his role was elevated to full-time status, and UCF again led Division III in home attendance in 1980.
"We are definitely committed to UCF—and I mean all of us, between me, my wife Jackie, who was a cheerleader, plus two of our four boys who played football there," says Giovanetti.
"Our kids have been going to games at UCF since they were born. We've been to almost every home game and a good portion of the away games. We are diehard Knights."
Giovanetti is convinced his UCF football experiences played a major role in his Orlando business successes.
"It was the camaraderie of being able to play college football, the people I met, the connections I made, the guys I played with," he says.
"The experience and discipline it instilled in me—I carry that over into our business practices. It's invaluable to me.
"I'm really proud to be a legacy Knight and proud to be associated with the program."
This is a recurring series of feature pieces on former UCF student-athletes.