John Richard Symank (August 31, 1935 – January 23, 2002) was an American college and professional football player who was a defensive back in the National Football League (NFL) for seven seasons during the 1950s and 1960s. Symank played college football for the University of Florida, and thereafter, he played professionally for the Green Bay Packers and St. Louis Cardinals of the NFL. He was later the head coach for Northern Arizona University and the University of Texas at Arlington football teams.

John R. Symank (1955-56) named to the University of Florida Football Hall of Fame.

John Symank was a junior transfer to Florida. Coach Bob Woodruff rated him as one of the Gators' five best defensive backs of the 1950s, and among their ten best offensive backs of the decade. The Green Bay Packers picked him in the impossibly low twenty-third round of the 1957 NFL Draft, but Symank rose to become one of the defensive stars of coach Vince Lombardi's 1961 and 1962 NFL Championship teams.

John Symank  a member of the 1962 Green Bay Packers World Championship Team.

“He is only 5-11 and at 180 pounds he is the lightest man on this squad. Compared with the others he looks like a baseball infielder, but he is a football player. . . . There is no actor in Symank. He is serious and intense, and in a game he would just as soon break your leg as not. He has made it in this league because he gets a great deal more out of himself than his ability and size justify . . . but John gets the maximum out of himself in every game, and if I had thirty-five others like him I would have a far better team than I have.”

—Coach Vince Lombardi, describing Johnny Symank
as a professional football player in Run to Daylight.

Season   Record

1970         2-8

1969         7-3