BEAVER TOWNSHIP — The next time you watch a basketball game, either in person or on television, take a really long look at the shoes players are wearing, or shall we say, endorsing as part of their contractual agreement.

Then think of Sonny Vaccaro, a 1962 Youngtown State University graduate, and the many players he steered to the companies – Nike, Adidas and Reebok – that employed his services over the years.

A native of Trafford, Pa., Vaccaro’s route to YSU was a circuitous one, a route that he has come to appreciate over the years.

Now in his seventh decade of working his magic with professional and college players and teams who endorsed his shoe products, Vaccaro said it has been a magical run with his alma mater, a big reason for the success that he has enjoyed.

“I got to Youngstown in the most roundabout way and it was the biggest accident to ever happen to me,” Vaccaro told the Curbstone Coaches during Monday’s meeting at Avion Banquet Center. “It was the most unpredictable thing, because I never thought I’d go there. I thought that I would go to the University of Kentucky or play baseball. I never thought I would be playing football, but from there, I went to a junior college in California.

“When I came home, I remembered that Dike Beede, the former Penguin football coach, had offered me a scholarship, among other schools, so I wrote him a letter. He wrote back saying that he remembered me, invited me to come to school and he would offer me a scholarship. I got injured, but it proved to be the biggest accident of my life, which turned out being one of the five best things that ever happened to me.”

Fast forward to his senior year and final class.

“The last class that I needed to receive my diploma was kinesiology,” Vaccaro said. “With all those bones and skeletons, the teachers’ names back then are a blur, but the ones that I had for class were all instrumental in preparing me in some small way for my professional journey. I had to get an ‘A’ in that kinesiology class, and by the way, I did exactly that and received my degree.”

After graduation, he took his marketing skills and launched the highly successful Dapper Dan Roundball Classic, which ran for 43 years in Pennsylvania and his noted ABCD Camp (1984-2007), later branching out to the newly designed Boardman High School in the early-1970’s with the help of the late Chuck Perazich, former sports editor of The Vindicator.

“Chuck Perazich was a great friend and he was my go-to guy in Youngstown,” Vaccaro said. “Once I graduated, Chuck was influential in my afterlife with players and teams from Ohio playing in those tournaments. He was a great, personal friend, and he and I did a promotion that had the Sonny Vaccaro All-Stars playing against the Ohio All-Stars at the Boardman Spartans’ gymnasium. Jeep Kelly, who later went on to play at UNLV and Hawaii, was in that game, and it was so well-received in the area that other roundball classics followed.

“Chuck put it all together for me. I got my kids from Western Pennsylvania and I just want the public to know what Chuck did back in the 1970s and 1980s for both me and basketball. It was never going to be the main sport in either Ohio or Pennsylvania because of football, but there we were staging our own basketball all-star game. Those days were special to me because my wife, Pam, and her family all graduated from Boardman High School.”

Vaccaro’s all-star games attracted the likes of Moses Malone, Shaquille O’Neill, Alonzo Mourning and other future hall of fame greats, while he is credited with recruiting Michael Jordan to Nike and other notable stars to both Adidas and Reebok, his other shoe employers.

“There is no logical reason for anybody in my sphere, during my life and especially during those times at such a young age, to have those things done,” Vaccaro said. “It remains unimaginable to me at this moment, to realize that those things happened back then.”

He credits former YSU basketball coach Dom Rosselli for pushing him toward basketball, a sport that captured his life and its link to the sports shoe industry in an ESPN “30 for 30” documentary, movie titled “Air” produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and book “Legends and Soles: The Memoir of an American Original” co-authored by Armen Keteyian.

“The movie was the movie and the book was the book, but the documentary was out of my control,” Vaccaro said. “It is still hard for me to believe, and how could I have thought of that when I went to Youngstown and didn’t even play a down or minute in any sport. Dom Rosselli was a great friend and he saw something in me. Dike and Dom gave me an opportunity, and I cannot thank them enough for the opportunity they afforded me because if it weren’t for them, this life of mine would never have happened.”

No single person has revolutionized the shoe industry more than Vaccaro.

“Of all the things I was able to do once I got started, once college was over, my connection to the game gave me the strength and mindset to go forward with all my thoughts and ideas,” Vaccaro said. “I was never afraid of anything that I did. With Michael [Jordan], I never saw him play and all the great basketball players who played in our all-star games, those were all things inside of me. The irony about life is the game of basketball gave me the ability to think outside the box because I never, ever studied for the skills that helped me identify talent. I never studied that, it was just a feeling. Michael Jordan was a feeling, as was LeBron James. They were all a feeling. I didn’t know them but made a bet on them, and it is just so hard for me to put into words.”

At age 86, the glowing omission from an otherwise one-of-a-kind resume is his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame for his contributions to the game.

“I never think about it. It’s not my job,” Vaccaro said in a matter of fact tone. “I am proud of what I was able to do, I am proud of my life and all the friends that I have made over the years. I can’t be bothered by what other people do or don’t think.”

On Monday, Dwaine Osborne, YSU associate head men’s basketball coach, will serve as the guest speaker.