Every June, the National Football Foundation (NFF) releases the finalists for the College Football Hall of Fame, and the announcement makes my blood boil.
The players and coaches named as finalists isn’t what draws my ire. Among this year’s finalists include Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, and Michael Vick. All three are sure fire hall of famers, and should be inducted.
What enrages me profusely, is the number of players and coaches who are ineligible for inclusion. Specifically, one larger than life figure that all Georgians revere.
Erskine “Erk” Russell graduated from Auburn University in 1950 and remains the school’s last four-sport letterman.
In 1964, Russell joined his college teammate Vince Dooley at the University of Georgia and became the team’s defense coordinator. During his seventeen years in Athens, the Bulldogs played 192 games and held the opposition to 17 or fewer points in 135 of them. Russell’s defenses at Georgia were rightly defined as the “junkyard dawgs.”
Following Georgia’s National Championship in 1980, Russell left Athens for Statesboro to what was then Georgia Southern College (now Georgia Southern University) to restart a football program which was dormant for 40 years. After three years as a club team, Russell led the program into Division I-AA (now FCS) in 1984.
When Russell was hired in 1981, the school was operating on a shoestring budget. The school didn’t have a football for Russell’s inaugural press conference, so the athletic director had to go buy one from the local K-Mart.
With no money for transportation to home games, the Eagles had to make do with surplus school buses bought from Bulloch County for only a dollar apiece; a tradition that still stands today.
One year after joining the FCS, Russell and his Eagles won the 1985 NCAA football national championship, beginning a run of three championships in five years. Russell retired following the 1989 season as the first coach to finish with a 15-0 undefeated record.
Over his eight seasons with Georgia Southern, Russell amassed a record of 83–22–1 (.788) and three national championships.
Russell’s three national championships alone should garner inclusion into the Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, Russell is ineligible, and unless the NFF changes its criteria, he’ll never be admitted.
The College Football Hall of Fame is the only Hall of Fame that gives specific metrics to players and coaches for inclusion.
For example, coaches must be a head coach for a minimum of ten years to be considered for induction. Russell was only a head coach for eight years.
This metric not only hurts Russell but former Southern California coach Pete Carroll who won two championships with the Trojans, and former Miami Hurricanes head coach Howard Schnellenberger who revived that program and turned it into the predominant powerhouse in the 1980s.
Players are not immune from this problem either. University of Georgia greats Nick Chubb and Stetson Bennett are not eligible for inclusion. The reason? A player must have been a first-team all-American to be considered for induction. Bennett, by the way, is the only quarterback to go 4-0 in the college football playoff and earn MVP honors in all four games.
Imagine for a moment if the NFL put metrics on their players and coaches for inclusion into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Former Dallas Cowboys head coach Jimmy Johnson, who won two titles in the mid-90s, was inducted into Canton in 2021. Under the college rules, Johnson would be ineligible because he only served nine years as a head coach.
The college rules aren’t even antiquated. They are just wrong and ridiculous. Russell started a program from scratch and led them to a national title in three years. Finalists Saban and Meyer couldn’t even come close to doing that.
Four years ago, I was blocked by the College Football Hall of Fame on Twitter; a ban that still stands today. The tweet that landed me in social media jail was, “How can you house your Hall of Fame in the state of Georgia while simultaneously disrespecting Georgians everywhere?”
The Hall built a big beautiful shrine to the sport in downtown Atlanta back in 2014. From all accounts, the building is a proper celebration to the sport which is so near and dear to the hearts of college football fans everywhere.
But, I wouldn’t know.
Until the NFF changes its criteria, I won’t step foot inside the College Football Hall of Fame until Erk Russell is properly inducted. My lone boycott in life is staying clear of that building, until they do right, and it’s the hill I’m happy to die on.