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Rise to Fame
Getting cut by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1969 didn't break him, but it did reroute his life through a high school classroom. He taught social studies for years before committing to acting, and a casting agent spotted him during a stage production of Of Mice and Men in 1984. Al Bundy in Married with Children did the rest. The shoe salesman who hated his life ran on Fox for 11 seasons starting in 1987, turning O'Neill into the patron saint of lovable failure.
In the Spotlight
Most actors would take Al Bundy as a career ceiling. O'Neill turned him into a foundation. Modern Family gave him Jay Pritchett, a second TV patriarch worth remembering, and ran for another 11 seasons ending in 2020. Three Emmy nominations and four SAG Awards came with it. A Ryan Murphy legal drama, All's Fair, has him alongside Glenn Close and Kim Kardashian, which is the kind of late-career development that Al Bundy would've called deeply suspicious.
Side Notes
He's a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt under Rorion Gracie, earned after 16 years of training that started when he walked into the academy in 1991 at age 45. He got the belt in 2007. He's reportedly the only person outside the Gracie family to receive a black belt directly from Rorion. The former defensive lineman who nearly had an NFL career apparently never stopped looking for things to put his body through.