SB Nation College Football Hall Of Fame Inductees Revealed

In the interest of transparency, some folks have asked us to release the full list of eligible nominees considered by the SB Nation College Football Hall of Fame selection committee. So here it is. Included here are all the nominees who were submitted on time and were eligible for the Hall.

QB Drew Brees, Purdue

It’s a little bit difficult to distill just how good Tom Osborne was into words. Not only is he one of the winningest coaches of all times, he’s also a coach that won at an incredible clip in terms of winning percentage. If Bear Bryant was the easy choice for the selection committee, Tom Osborne was as close as it came for the fan poll [editor’s note - even if Nebraska fans did resort to Big 8 tactics]. Corn Nation found this way to put it into words:

Tom Osborne won with 75 percent of the vote -- and many of those votes were legitimate. Osborne joins Bear Bryant, who won at Alabama, Texas A&M and Kentucky(!), as the first two coaches in the SB Nation College Football Hall of Fame.

It’s hard to think of a more deserving eligible player who’s not in the “actual” College Football Hall of Fame than Tommie Frazier. And it might have taken the fan vote and more than a little kvetching to get it done, but the SB Nation College Football Hall of Fame is pleased to induct Frazier as part of it’s inaugural class. Our Nebraska blog Corn Nation puts it this way.

Frazier captured a commanding 68 percent of the vote in our fan poll. He joins Vince Young of Texas in the quarterback wing.

There was some consternation from Georgia fans about the omission of Herschel Walker in the first round of inductees into the SB Nation College Football Hall of Fame. The fans made that a moot point by putting Walker into the Hall. Our Georgia blog, Dawg Sports, tells you why this was such a big deal:

Walker won with 64 percent of the vote in the poll. He joins Ricky Williams of Texas, who was chosen by the Hall’s selection committee.

There’s no doubt that this year’s inaugural class of the SB Nation Hall of Fame is going to have a decidedly red hue, particularly given that many of the game’s traditional powerhouses like some shade of red. And one of the game’s powerhouses likes the shade of red that we call “crimson.”

Alabama gets another nominee into the Hall of Fame with Derrick Thomas, a superstar defensive lineman for the Tide in the late 1980s. Our SEC blog, Team Speed Kills, summed up Thomas’ career this way:

Not every vote was a runaway, and the fan vote on linebacker proved to be one of the harder-fought (at least in terms of margin) in the inaugural poll for linebacker in the SB Nation College Football Hall of Fame. In the end, it was Texas’ Derrick Johnson who cross the finish line with more votes than anyone else.

Here’s some of what one of our two fine blogs focused on Texas had to say about Johnson:

Wyoming might be invisible to the BCS, but the Cowboys clearly aren’t going to be invisible in the SB Nation College Football Hall of Fame. Taking out several higher-profile names on the fan ballot, Marcus Harris is now one of two wideouts in the inaugural class.

Our Wyoming blog, Cowboy Altitude, put all its eggs in one basket -- and it paid off.

As our Iowa blog, Black Heart Gold Pants, told us in an email:

Clark won an impressive 91 percent of the vote in our fan poll. He joins Alabama’s Ozzie Newsome in the inaugural class of tight ends.

There was only one guy who wasn’t a kicker among the names that fans could choose for their inaugural special teams choice to our SB Nation College Football Hall of Fame. And kickers never get credit for anything -- so Tim Dwight naturally ended up winning the poll.

Our Iowa blog, Black Heart Gold Pants, told us this about Dwight in an email.

If there has been a contentious position in this selection process, it’s running back. Part of that is because of names that were or weren’t submitted to the committee, some of that was because there’s no lack of worthy candidates, and part of that is probably because on many teams, the running back is one of the most popular players among fans. Here are your choices for running back -- and, again, politicking is encouraged.

This poll will stay open all weekend, with the full list of winners revealed Monday morning. (Also: a word from the commish on players who didn’t make the list.)

The ACC might not be the strong football conference in the nation, or even its own region, right now -- but it has two of our nominees for wide receiver. We’ve also got one of the all-time greats at the position and a guy many of you might have never heard of but was still one of the most prolific wideouts in the history of the game.

This poll will stay open all weekend, with the full list of winners revealed Monday morning.

As we mentioned earlier this week, tight end isn’t always the most glamorous position. But there are a few names here that you’ll remember -- and one that has a bit of an echo to it. All of these players had an impact on their team’s fortunes that goes beyond that originally associated with their position.

This poll will stay open all weekend, with the full list of winners revealed Monday morning.

It’s not as easy to measure the impact of an offensive lineman -- after all, the best ones by definition don’t make much of a dent in the stat sheet. But most of these names should sound familiar, and not for the wrong reasons. One of them even has a trophy named after him.

Previously inducted OL: Orlando Pace, Ohio State.

When they say that you can win or lose a game on special teams, they’re no doubt talking about the kind of guys we have listed below. Punters who can change field position -- maybe even make a pick or two -- and place kickers who are near certainties to bang up between the goal posts.

This poll will stay open all weekend, with the full list of winners revealed Monday morning.

They’re the quarterbacks of the defense, so their impact on the team goes far beyond stats. But the stats are also pretty impressive for our nominees for the linebacking corps of the SB Nation College Football Hall of Fame. And we’ve got a pretty broad cross-section of the country here -- even if West Virginia is now technically a Big 12 team.

This poll will stay open all weekend, with the full list of winners revealed Monday morning.

When fans talk about SEC speed, many are referring to the players along the lines, and the defensive line in particular. So maybe it’s not a surprise that half of our nominees in this category come from the conference whose name has become synonymous with quickness. But it’s not an all SEC affair -- the Oregon Ducks and even a MAC team both have entries in the category.

This poll will stay open all weekend, with the full list of winners revealed Monday morning.

If the SEC took the first head coaching spot, the Big Ten will certainly get the fan vote. Four of the finest coaches from that conference’s schools -- even if Tom Osborne isn’t “really” a Big Ten guy -- are up for induction. One of them had a somewhat bumpy, um, retirement -- but he was still a pretty good coach.

This poll will stay open all weekend, with the full list of winners revealed Monday morning.

Because there’s already been some outrage in various corners of the Internet, permit me a brief point of personal privilege here to talk about some of what might look like some of the more glaring omissions from the inaugural class of the Hall of Fame. I can’t and won’t presume to speak for all of the selection committee, but I do think I can offer a few insights.

First of all, one of the main reasons we started this Hall of Fame was to try to highlight great players that might not get into the “actual” Hall for one of the various bizarre rules or might not yet be eligible for the actual Hall because of eligibility time frames that are puzzling. (Why should a player’s career in the NFL have anything to do with when he’s eligible for an organization devoted to college football?)

You could make a lot of cases for Desmond Howard going into the SB Nation College Football Hall of Fame. After all, his 19 receiving touchdowns in 1991 -- still a Michigan record for a single season -- undoubtedly played a big part of his Heisman Trophy win that season. But so did his skill at returning kicks and punts, and so he is inducted to the Hall as our special teams/athlete for this class.

Howard’s 1990 season included a 29.6-yard average on kick returns, No. 2 in Michigan history, and a 15.7-yard average on punt returns, still the school record. Howard’s career average of 26.9 yards on kickoff returns is also a school mark to this day, as is the 22.4 yard overall return average. Howard holds the longest punt return in Michigan history -- a 93-yard touchdown that brought on his famous Heisman moment.

There was a Woodson among the two unanimous choices for defensive backs by our selection committee, but it might not be the Woodson you think -- instead, it’s Purdue’s Rod Woodson, who had his own great career about a decade before someone with the same last name won the Heisman Trophy. Woodson becomes the first defensive back inducted into the SB Nation College Football Hall of Fame.

And despite being overshadowed nowadays by that other Woodson, Rod was a great player in his own right. He notched 455 career tackles and 11 career interceptions; overall, he broke up 29 passes during his four seasons in the Big Ten. Woodson also averaged better than 20 yards per kickoff return in three of the four season he handled at least some of those duties for the Boilermakers. Hammer and Rails puts the case this way:

Whatever his reputation off the field -- and it started back when he was in high school -- there’s no denying that Randy Moss is one of the most athletically blessed players to put on a college uniform. And that made him an easy unanimous selection to be the first wide receiver to enter the SB Nation Hall of Fame.

How good was Randy Moss? So good that the Marshall player (after being dismissed at Notre Dame and Florida State) was nominated by our West Virginia blog, The Smoking Musket.