{"id":1528,"date":"2025-01-14T16:24:13","date_gmt":"2025-01-14T16:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/?p=1528"},"modified":"2025-01-14T16:24:13","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T16:24:13","slug":"ncis-star-mark-harmon-almost-became-an-nfl-quarterback-before-joining-franchise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/?p=1528","title":{"rendered":"NCIS star Mark Harmon almost became an NFL quarterback before joining franchise"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Before NCIS, Mark Harmon had a love for football that could have led him to becoming a quarterback in the NFL. He is best known for his role as Leroy Jethro Gibbs for 19 seasons<\/h2>\n
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\"Mark<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Mark Harmon was close<\/a> to joining the big leagues of the NFL before becoming an actor.<\/p>\n

The actor is known for his role as Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS, who he played for 19 seasons starting in 2003. Mark made headlines when he made cameos on the\u00a0new spinoff, NCIS: Origins<\/a>, which stars\u00a0Austin Stowell as a young Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs<\/a>, Kyle Schmid as a young Special Agent Mike Franks and Mariel Molino as Special Agent Lala Dominguez, in October 2024.<\/p>\n

Before his iconic role,\u00a0Mark was on the verge<\/a> to becoming a quarterback for the NFL. This comes as a surprise to some but little did many know, his father, Tom Harmon, was a Heisman Trophy winner and broadcaster.<\/p>\n

Mark played football when he attended Los Angeles\u2019 Harvard School (now known as Harvard-Westlake) and was then recruited to play for Pierce Junior College in Woodland Hills, California. He got the team to a 7-2 record in 1971 and earned All-America status. According to\u00a0Remind Magazine<\/a>, Mark\u2019s success earned him many of scholarship offers, but decided to play for UCLA.<\/p>\n

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\"Mark<\/figure>\n

He is best known for his role as Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS<\/span>\u00a0(<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Many believed that Mark was going to play for the NFL after graduating college since led the team to a huge win over the two-time national champion Nebraska Cornhuskers and helped UCLA with a 17-5 record. He even received the National Football Foundation Award for All-Around Excellence during his senior year after playing as a starting quarterback.<\/p>\n

Mark went from being a top wanted football star to pursuing a career in business as a merchandising director, to then becoming the actor now know and love. Mark has played in major films like Certain Prey, Weather Girl, Freaky Friday and others.<\/p>\n

He departed from his role as Leroy on NCIS in 2021 but acted as an\u00a0executive producer and narrator<\/a>\u00a0on the series, keeping him connected to the series. Before his cameos in the new series, NCIS: Origins, Mark admitted to Entertainment Tonight that he wanted to \u201chelp the show in any way\u201d he could.<\/p>\n

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Before NCIS, Mark Harmon had a love for football that could have led him to becoming a quarterback in the NFL. He is best known for his… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1528"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1530,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528\/revisions\/1530"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}