Don’t bother looking: Howard Schnellenberger and Erk Russell remain off the ballot. That’s the bad news. The good news is that there are truly no undeserving members of the College Football Hall of Fame, though there are certainly nominees — or should-be nominees excluded due to some puzzling nomination criteria — more deserving than others. The National Football Foundation, which runs the Hall of Fame, released its 2012 ballot in late February. The ballot consisted of 76 former players and 8 former coaches; there were four Heisman winners among the nominees, and three of the eight coaches won at least one national championship. If you remember, my personal criteria for inclusion in the Hall of Fame were fairly simple:
Any player that wins the Heisman gets a free pass to the Hall of Fame – not including Reggie Bush, though I could probably be swayed to place a check beside his name based solely on the way he dominated the F.B.S. over the final two seasons of his college career. Any player that is the best at his position in the history of a major program also gets the call.
Was he the best player in the country – as we know, this doesn’t always translate to the Heisman – at any point during his college career? Come on down. What about the most valuable part of a transcendent, national title-winning team, or a team that dominated its conference over a multiple-year span? Also in. Using these standards, I gave my vote to the following 2012 nominees:
LB Erick Anderson, Michigan; DE Tedy Bruschi, Arizona; QB Eric Crouch, Nebraska; QB Ty Detmer, B.Y.U.; RB D.J. Dozier, Penn State; QB Tommie Frazier, Nebraska; K Charlie Gogolak, Princeton; DB Jerry Gray, Texas; WR Raghib Ismail, Notre Dame; FB Jim Otis, Ohio State; OT Orlando Pace, Ohio State; NG Mike Ruth, Boston College; LB Mark Simoneau, Kansas State; OT Matt Stinchcomb, Georgia; QB Vinny Testaverde, Miami (Fla.); LB Derrick Thomas, Alabama; RB Lorenzo White, Michigan State; and QB Danny Wuerffel, Florida.
The coaching criteria in use by the Hall of Fame are foolish, nonsensical, unfair and biased towards coaches who take the easy path, not the road less traveled. The Hall of Fame purports to highlight the greatest figures in the history of the sport but excludes coaches like Schnellenberger and Russell from even being considered for inclusion; this, in effect, makes the Hall of Fame an almost-but-not-quite Hall of Fame.
Among the eight nominate head coaches, I cast my vote for Wayne Hardin, who might be the finest coach in the history of two programs, Temple and Navy; Jimmy Johnson; Bill McCartney, a national title winner at Colorado; Jim Carlen, a winner at West Virginia, Texas Tech and South Carolina, back when each was not the program it is today; and Phil Fulmer, another title winner.
So who made the cut? The Hall of Fame’s class of 2012 named three coaches: Fulmer, Johnson and R.C. Slocum — the latter is the second-best coach in the modern era of Texas A&M football, trailing only Bear Bryant. Another 14 players got the call:
WR Art Monk, Syracuse; RB Charles Alexander, L.S.U.; TE Dave Casper, Notre Dame; DL Gabe Rivera, Texas Tech; S Greg Myers, Colorado State; WR Hal Bledsole, U.S.C.; OG John Wooten, Colorado; OT Jonathan Ogden, U.C.L.A.; LB Mark Simoneau, Kansas State; RB Otis Armstrong, Purdue; S Scott Thomas, Air Force; QB Steve Bartkowski, California; QB Ty Detmer, B.Y.U.; and QB Tommy Kramer, Rice.
One note on voting criteria that I was unaware of prior to this afternoon: According to Ivan Maisel of ESPN — who knows a thing or two about how this process works — the Hall of Fame won’t elect players from the same school in back-to-back years. If that is a rule the voting committee takes to the bank, that would eliminate any nominees from Nebraska, Michigan or Ohio State, among others. Each had one former player or coach elected as part of last year’s class.
Regardless of that silly rule, the following players will wait at least one more year before being elected to the Hall of Fame: Frazier, Pace, Wuerffel, Derrick Thomas, Testaverde and Otis, among so many other deserving candidates.
Pace was the starting offensive tackle on Sports Illustrated’s all-century team in 1999, so he could play a little football. Even with the recent proliferation of highly productive college quarterbacks, Wuerffel’s career numbers remain among the most prolific in the game’s history. As for Frazier…
How many tackles can one man break? Not enough to get into the College Football Hall of Fame, apparently. Frazier is the greatest run-first quarterback in the history of college football. He went 33-2 as a starter; won four straight conference championships; was a two-time Orange Bowl M.V.P. and the 1996 Fiesta Bowl M.V.P.; threw for more than 4,000 yards and rushed for nearly another 3,000; and was the leader of the most dominant team in college football history.
Again, there are no undeserving inductees, just candidates more worthy of induction. Congratulations to the 17-member class of 2012. Next year, the Hall of Fame might induct a few nominees wholly deserving of having their names officially etched in the sport’s history. Until then, we’ll just enshrine each former player in our own personal hall of fame.
