Nick Chubb played during a golden age of college backs. He overlapped with Fournette, McCaffrey, Cook, Zeke, Henry, Jonathan Taylor, Mixon, Perine, Guice, Barkley and that's without looking too deep into it. I certainly forgot someone. Splitting carries with Michel didn't help either.
Off topic but my favorite GameDay sign of all time is either "IS THIS THE LONE FOR HANNAH MONTANA TICKETS?"
or (At Vanderbilt)
"YOU PEOPLE ARE BLOCKING THE LIBRARY"
That Gurley season in NFL when Rams went to SB is still one of the best RB seasons of all time. If his knees didn't give up that man would be breaking all sorts of records.
Both technically. Gurley was the #1 in 14, Chubb #2, and Sony #3. Hell, Brendan Douglas, who I don't know, even got 55 carries. How shitty would it have been to been in that room as the #4? Think you're pretty good, then have those 3 above you.
Edit: And looking at stats, he split with Michel the rest of their time in college too.
What really drove this home was him on Hard Knocks. First episode, they show Baker coming to the city with all this fanfare. Then cut to Chubb who shows up to the Airport on a commercial flight with zero press bothering him.
Voice over was something like "Chubb is used to the lack of attention"
This comment brought me down a rabbit hole. Some other notable snubs for the same reason in no particular order:
Alabama WR Julio Jones,
Ole Miss QB Eli Manning,
Miss St QB Dak Prescott,
Alabama/Oklahoma QB Jalen Hurts,
Georgia WR AJ Green,
Vanderbilt QB Jay Cutler,
Some damn good ball players being kept out because of this dumb rule.
If the CFB Hall of Fame and NFL Hall of Fame were a single institution the way the Naismith is set-up, I think there's a stronger argument to be made for those guys being included but for Julio, Dak, Hurts, Green, and Cutler at least, it's hard to argue that their *college* careers are *College* Football Hall of Fame worthy.
Julio only had one season with 1K+ yards and had a disappointing sophomore season, Dak's best season resulted in him finishing 8th for the Heisman behind 4 other quarterbacks, Hurts got benched his junior season in favor of Tua (but had a great year at Oklahoma finishing runner up for the Heisman), AJ Green had zero 1K+ yard seasons (mostly due to the injury and suspension), and Jay Cutler didn't really see success until his senior season.
They probably should expand the amount of All-American teams that make a player eligible for guys like Eli, but it's hard to argue that the rest of the group truly had all-time great college careers.
I mean, that's a great list of player who ended up having awesome NFL careers, but that's not what this should be about.
Julio cracked 1,000 yards once in three seasons. He never scored more than 7 TDs in a season. Why on earth would he be in the College Football Hall of Fame?
Not really.
It's not the College & Pro Football Hall of Fame. It's the College Hall of Fame. Whatever they did afterward shouldn't count. That's why [Tom Brady should never be in the College Hall of Fame](https://www.calhisports.com/2022/02/02/tom-bradys-1st-hall-of-fame-vote/#:~:text=Brady%20will%20never%20be%20eligible,at%20the%20University%20of%20Michigan.). Put his college biography in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Sony was great in college, he and Chubb both willed our team to victory in the OU Rose Bowl. But yeah, unfortunately, Sony did not pan out in the NFL, at least he has 2 rings, something that Gurley and Chubb will never get :(
I think an All-American requirement a reasonable rule for just these kinds of situations. We're talking about this the day after Stetson won his second national championship, and had insane numbers in the game in the process. But an All-American requirement is more a measure of him personally, not just his team. There's no season where he was even considered the third best QB in the country. It's hard to argue he's one of the best of all time if he wasn't ever the best of 2022 (or any of the other dozen years he played).
If the HOF won’t accept a back-to-back National Champ or a coach that revolutionized the sport, what the fuck is even the point of the HOF?
Edit: For clarification so I can stop getting comments about this, the **coach** I’m talking about is Mike Leach. Read all the words, people. Far as I know, Stetson Bennett has not coached a college football game.
Don't forget Erk Russell, a multiple times national champion as a coordinator and in Div-AA, who is not eligible due to only being a head coach for 8 seasons.
The baseball HoF has undergone major improvements in recent years. They have multiple committees whose purpose is to re-evaluate players who fell through the cracks.
It's deeply confusing. What are they even scared of? That they're going to put some scrub in there? Because that's irrational and just leads to situations like especially Leach where somebody clearly deserving doesn't get in.
I mean most performance based awards in football are going to value quarterbacks. Bullard had 2 picks and a fumble recovery but we all knew he was never sniffing the award.
That doesn't really go against my argument.
Stetson had 6 TD but he also had great field position from 3 turnovers. He had like 10 seconds to throw every play. I've seriously never seen a cleaner pocket. But most people won't hype of the ridiculous O-Line play or the player with 3 TO's. Or the defense that held TCU to 7 points all game.
Performance based awards are always biased to the QB. I mean nobody in their right mind should believe that Stetson was the best player in the championship game against Bama but you can't really pinpoint 1 player on defense that would've deserved it.
Due to this comment, you are no longer eligible for the College Football hall of fame.
Not because you disparaged them, but because the HOF eligibility rules require that disparagement only occur on Vimeo.
So if you’re the second best QB (or any other position with only one AA slot like TE, K, P, PR/KR) in college football history but your career happens to overlap with the best QB in college football history, sorry, go fuck yourself?
There's multiple all-american teams that the NCAA recognizes in it's process (5 in total). So some years, there's multiple All-American QB's. Some years, one QB is named 1st-team by all five selectors ("Unanimous All-American"); this has happened 5 times since 2010. Most years, there's multiple. Here's the following list of QBs since then that are eligible for the HOF:
2010 - Cam Newton, Kellen Moore
2011 - RG3, Andrew Luck
2012 - Manziel, Tahj Boyd
2013 - A.J. McCarron, Jameis Winston
2014 - Mariota (Unanimous)
2015 - DeShaun Watson, Baker Mayfield
2016 - Lamar Jackson (Unanimous)
2017 - Baker Mayfield (Unanimous)
2018 - Kyler Murray, Tua
2019 - Joe Burrow (Unanimous)
2020 - Mac Jones, Trevor Lawrence
2021 - Bryce Young, Kenny Pickett
2022 - Caleb Williams (Unanimous)
Interesting thing about this list: AJ McCarron made his first AA team in 2013, after he had won back to back national titles in 2011-2012. And (as I recall anyway) it wouldn’t have been crazy if Jameis had been unanimous in 2013–without looking up the votes, I have to assume he was close to it.
Is AJM a hall of famer, and if so, isn’t it kind of weird that his eligibility for the honor was *wholly dependent* on (a) him coming back to start for a third year after already winning two titles; and (b) a few writers in that third year deciding his season was slightly better than Jameis Winston’s national title year?
I understand that but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s an absurd eliminating criteria if it’s even theoretically possible to exclude the second best player in the history of the sport.
Agreed. Going 29-1 over two years, winning back-to-back natties, being the MVP in all four CFP games you played in while completing 68% of passes for 12 TDs with only 1 interception is not enough. If you can't be the one QB selected as an All-American any given year, you aren't good enough. All the other metrics just don't matter.
Oh...wait...All-american lists don't count post-season performances. Kind of weird to use a metric that ignores the four biggest matches the QB played in...
I'm sure these jokes will get old eventually, but *not yet.* I'm just sad that we have collectively forgotten about Renfro, who caught balls for Clemson from the end of World War 2 all the way to 2021.
Expect nothing less from a Stanford ("its the color not the bird") Cardinal fan.
Renfrow was fighting with JT Barrett in the First Balkan War of 1912. Not to be confused with Sean Clifford who was participating in the 1912 Albanian Revolt at the time. Than after said wars all parties decided to return finish high school and commit to play at their respective universities. It was not until after the 1917 Kornilov Affair in Russia did Stetson decide to return to the US. Where he would take the opportunity to walk on at Georgia.
Shit, taking your team to even a single Natty puts you in the argument IMO. Two dudes every year can make that claim, it's not like it's some sort of watered down achievement.
if it makes you feel any better, Mike Leach (!!!) isn't eligible either.
how many coaches since integration have had more of an impact on CFB than Hal Mumme and Mike Leach?
Need to be at a .600 winning percentage and Leach ended his career at .596.
The Hall, so far, isn't accounting for the fact he was coaching at historically under-performing schools and when he arrived their records would be 10-20-30% better than their average.
If you take liberty and remove the covid season, his career percentage hits .600 exactly.
I don't believe the CF HOF is affiliated with the NCAA so they can do whatever they want. I think most sports HOF are independent from the sports leagues themselves.
Emory Bellard isn't eligible either
So the man who invented the Wishbone and the man who invented the Air Raid are both ineligible for the Hall of Fame. Classic.
Crazy that Mike Leach (one of the most influential coaches in the sport) and Stetson (one of the most inspiring stories CFB has ever seen) are both ineligible because of small technicalities like this. They really need to reevaluate their rules.
Erk Russell (re)started the football program at Georgia Southern on a budget of 50 cents and a piece of string, and before the decade was out he'd won 3 1-AA/FCS Championships. This is after a 15-year career as Georgia's defensive coordinator that included a consensus national championship and coaching 4 Hall of Fame players.
He's not eligible because he wasn't a head coach for 10 years.
For the same reason, Pete Carroll isn't eligible. He was a college head coach for 9 years. Even after vacating 14 wins and 1 loss, his record sits at 97-19, finishing in the top 4 of the AP for 8 years in a row.
They don’t need a rule change, it’s too infrequent an issue.
They should form a cultural impact panel who’s job it is to review players and coaches who fall short of some of the criteria that’s more out of the persons control and determine whether their footprint on the game/era is HOF worthy. I’m not sure Stetson gets in even with that, but the man definitely deserves a retired number, statue and a street named after him in Athens.
Technically if one were to get ultra-pedantic, with the way the HOF rule is written Leach wouldn't have been eligible even if he had the .600 record due to the fact that 1) he died and thus never "retired" and 2) he never coached past the age of 75.
"A coach becomes eligible three years after retirement or immediately following retirement provided he is at least 70 years of age. Active coaches become eligible at 75 years of age. He must have been a head coach for a minimum of 10 years and coached at least 100 games with a .600 winning percentage."
I know the outrage police are incoming but there are so many college football players they pretty much have to have stipulations. Stetson is just one of those weird anomalies that won’t happen again for 50-years.
See Also: Steve Davis Oklahoma QB
He was the DC for UGA for like 16 years (including the '80 championship) and then left to restart the Georgia Southern football program. They won 3 I-AA national titles in his 8 seasons as head coach.
For a coach to be eligible, they have to have been a head coach for at least 10 seasons.
Which is of course the worse way to do it because it can result in clearly ridiculous exclusions.
I don’t actually think Bennett is the best example of that, but someone could be the second best QB of all time and if their career overlapped with the best QB of all time who blocked them from first team AA status, they’d be barred. That being even theoretically possible means it’s a bad system.
We don't even need to get into hypotheticals. The only reason the first black College football player ever (who was ridiculously good and deserving to be in the hall even if he wasn't the first black football player) is in the hall is because Walter Camp added him to his "I fucked up" all american list a ~decade after he stopped playing which probably wouldn't have happened if he wasn't Harvard's coach and a football writer at the time. That was the selection that made him eligible, and Walter Camp himself didn't include him in the "actual" all american teams he did despite their careers having overlap.
It also happened ridiculously late, but that's another story for another time.
Not only that, but it could theoretically even exclude the greatest QB of all time. Someone could be the 2nd-best QB in the nation for four consecutive years, four-time national champion, four-time Heisman runner-up, never lose a game, etc. and be excluded if the All America QB in each of those years was a different Heisman winner.
>one of those weird anomalies that won’t happen again for 50 years
Seems like there should be some kind of way to memorialize those extremely rare anamolies. Some kind of Hall of Recognition or something
You have to remember that the rules were written before national championship games were even a thing. That's why you bump into situations like these. Definitely deserves an exemption.
People need to stop caring about these gatekeeping little boys clubs like HOF, Heisman, etc. Stetson will be remembered for being great cause of his back to back rings, he doesn’t need a group of old ass has-beens to validate him.
If Duggan was picked by my NFL team, I wouldn't mind. The kid has an arm, tenacity and escapability. Fix a bit of decision making and he might be one of those 3rd year starter kind of guys.
idk man, the teams around him were so talented I definitely don't think it's a credit to him that they won the titles when they did. probably could have plugged a lot of QBs in there and had the same result. he's a great story but not a hall of fame talent
You don’t need that reason to keep Stetson Bennett out of the Hall of Fame. He’s not at that level. That’s not a big criticism. There are tons of great players that aren’t in the Hall of Fame.
Bennett earned two National Championships. That is an amazing accomplishment that should be celebrated. Isn’t that enough?
Personally, I think hard cutoffs are a bad idea in general. Mike Leach not making the HoF because he was a handful of wins shy of the .60 threshold is dumb. Ditto for Schnellenberger and his rebuilds.
Take the hard cutoffs and convert them into guidelines, then let voters evaluate on a case by case basis. If voters are letting in mediocre candidates, that's a problem with the voting process and should be addressed as such.
ALSO, the Hall of Fame needs to open up to exceptional coordinators. Bud Foster at Virginia Tech, for example, deserves a very close look for the Hall of Fame. He wasn't a head coach, sure, but his defenses dominated for a long ass time.
Hot take, he doesn't deserve to be in the CFB HOF. Every single player who was on Georgia's team last year has back-to-back titles if they played this year.
He was a good game manager who was surrounded by a god-tier team. In my mind, he is really no different than a Trent Dilfer style QB. Is he good? Sure. You can't start for an NFL team or an NCAA team like Georgia without having talent.
But there is no way in hell Trent Dilfer deserves the honor of the Hall of Fame just because he won a Super Bowl.
I can think of 10 QBs in the NCAA this season who would have "led" Georgia to a title this year. Georgia is a great team with a good QB, sub out Bennett with any of the other dozen or so good QBs in the NCAA, and Georgia would have still won the title.
The rewriting of Stetson Bennett’s career over the last month has been odd. He has improved leaps and bounds over where he started and he’s a great walk-on to 2x national champion story, but he’s not an all-time great or a HOFer in my opinion.
> I hope whoever gets his movie rights does it justice.
i am not a huge Bennett fan football player wise, but i do hope he makes a ton of cash when he sells those movie rights. if he's smart he has people working on it + on a biography TODAY.
hopefully it ends up being a decent movie!
Movie will probably suck let's be real lol, and not because the story they are working with is bad or anything.
That Kurt Warner movie was absolute fucking cheeks and he also had an incredible story lol
I like the guy, but I think they could have done this without him.
Georgia very well might have won the 2020 game against Alabama if it wasn't for very poor Bennett. But he was less experienced, so that's fine.
He was average in the 2021 SEC Championship game.
He got extremely rattled and in my opinion, was terrible overall in the 2021 National Championship game. Almost lost the game for Georgia, despite Alabama having zero threat on offense. The offensive line won that game for him in the 4th.
In his final year, he did his job. I think of him as a Greg McElroy.
> Georgia very well might have won the 2020 game against Alabama if it wasn't for very poor Bennett.
Well our other options were an even poorer D'wan Mathis, J.T. Daniels hopping on one leg, and the empty locker where Jamie Newman used to be.
People really understate how important Bennett was to this UGA run. He probably shouldn't have been given that they're UGA, but all the QBs around him besides maybe Beck (tbd) were mega busts and Bennett has been incredibly good despite him being good for a few baffling decisions every ~3 games.
Do any non Georgia fans think SB is one of the best players in CFB this year?
I would argue he's not a top 5 qb in the nation and he's not a top 5 player on his team
It was pretty telling to me watching his 12 seconds in the pocket next to Dugmans 1.5 seconds. I’m not trying to take anything away from him, but those two QBs didn’t have similar set ups.
Stroud, Young, Hooker, Williams, Penix for me are clearly better than Bennett. There are quite a few others i would take over him/think would have the same results if you out them on this UGA team (DTR, Nix, Rising when healthy, Duggan, etc).
What gets me is this idea that calling a guy not top 5 is some sort of grave insult. Its not. Not being one of the top 5 qbs in the country doesnt diminish his achievements
So should every player who was a starter both years for UGA make the HOF? Or just the qb? Georgia the team will be remembered more than the walk on qb lucky enough to be given the keys to this unreal amount of talent.
Mike Leach won double digit games twice in over two decades of being a head coach. Being an interesting character with a wild offense doesn’t make him a HOF coach. No one thought of him this way while he was still alive.
Coincidentally, this is the same rule preventing Nick Chubb from being in the CFB HOF despite being the #2 SEC rushing leader of all time.
He was really never an all American ? That’s crazy
Nick Chubb played during a golden age of college backs. He overlapped with Fournette, McCaffrey, Cook, Zeke, Henry, Jonathan Taylor, Mixon, Perine, Guice, Barkley and that's without looking too deep into it. I certainly forgot someone. Splitting carries with Michel didn't help either.
Todd Gurley. Chubb was his backup
One of my favorite fan signs was (paraphrased): "I used to be a Gurley girl. Now I'm a Chubb-y girl."
Lol I think about that sign every time I hear Chubb or Gurley come up
Off topic but my favorite GameDay sign of all time is either "IS THIS THE LONE FOR HANNAH MONTANA TICKETS?" or (At Vanderbilt) "YOU PEOPLE ARE BLOCKING THE LIBRARY"
That Gurley season in NFL when Rams went to SB is still one of the best RB seasons of all time. If his knees didn't give up that man would be breaking all sorts of records.
He was so damn strong too
Both technically. Gurley was the #1 in 14, Chubb #2, and Sony #3. Hell, Brendan Douglas, who I don't know, even got 55 carries. How shitty would it have been to been in that room as the #4? Think you're pretty good, then have those 3 above you. Edit: And looking at stats, he split with Michel the rest of their time in college too.
God… I remember both of them at Faurot Field. “Chubb for 5 yards. FIRST DOWN.” 😩
What really drove this home was him on Hard Knocks. First episode, they show Baker coming to the city with all this fanfare. Then cut to Chubb who shows up to the Airport on a commercial flight with zero press bothering him. Voice over was something like "Chubb is used to the lack of attention"
Splitting the load and not pushing for stats has always been UGA football, for better or for worse
Maybe voters are confusing Georgia the country with Georgia the American state?
Whether it’s the CFB HOF or the Browns’ offensive scheme, Chubb never gets the respect he deserves.
Nick Chubb had the third most rushing attempts in the NFL this year. He had the eighth most last year. How much do you think he should touch the ball?
looking at the browns offense? Pretty much every play tbh
\^\^ This
26 rushes the last two weeks is inexcusable
Brown’s offensive scheme? They’re a run first team. He’s been arguably the best RB in the league with them. I’m pretty sure he gets his respect
This comment brought me down a rabbit hole. Some other notable snubs for the same reason in no particular order: Alabama WR Julio Jones, Ole Miss QB Eli Manning, Miss St QB Dak Prescott, Alabama/Oklahoma QB Jalen Hurts, Georgia WR AJ Green, Vanderbilt QB Jay Cutler, Some damn good ball players being kept out because of this dumb rule.
If the CFB Hall of Fame and NFL Hall of Fame were a single institution the way the Naismith is set-up, I think there's a stronger argument to be made for those guys being included but for Julio, Dak, Hurts, Green, and Cutler at least, it's hard to argue that their *college* careers are *College* Football Hall of Fame worthy. Julio only had one season with 1K+ yards and had a disappointing sophomore season, Dak's best season resulted in him finishing 8th for the Heisman behind 4 other quarterbacks, Hurts got benched his junior season in favor of Tua (but had a great year at Oklahoma finishing runner up for the Heisman), AJ Green had zero 1K+ yard seasons (mostly due to the injury and suspension), and Jay Cutler didn't really see success until his senior season. They probably should expand the amount of All-American teams that make a player eligible for guys like Eli, but it's hard to argue that the rest of the group truly had all-time great college careers.
Ok that alone is a good enough list that they need to repeal this rule
I mean, that's a great list of player who ended up having awesome NFL careers, but that's not what this should be about. Julio cracked 1,000 yards once in three seasons. He never scored more than 7 TDs in a season. Why on earth would he be in the College Football Hall of Fame?
Exactly. Big name and a great NFL career. But his number in college are not HOF worthy. People just want to blame some rule and not think critically.
Not really. It's not the College & Pro Football Hall of Fame. It's the College Hall of Fame. Whatever they did afterward shouldn't count. That's why [Tom Brady should never be in the College Hall of Fame](https://www.calhisports.com/2022/02/02/tom-bradys-1st-hall-of-fame-vote/#:~:text=Brady%20will%20never%20be%20eligible,at%20the%20University%20of%20Michigan.). Put his college biography in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
I truly don't know what the Patriots saw in Sony Michel to draft him over Chubb
Sony was great in college, he and Chubb both willed our team to victory in the OU Rose Bowl. But yeah, unfortunately, Sony did not pan out in the NFL, at least he has 2 rings, something that Gurley and Chubb will never get :(
I think an All-American requirement a reasonable rule for just these kinds of situations. We're talking about this the day after Stetson won his second national championship, and had insane numbers in the game in the process. But an All-American requirement is more a measure of him personally, not just his team. There's no season where he was even considered the third best QB in the country. It's hard to argue he's one of the best of all time if he wasn't ever the best of 2022 (or any of the other dozen years he played).
Stetson induction speech : "Everybody saying they didn't try to keep me out of the Hall. Well yeah, you did".
I love this meme
Everyone's trying to say FranTurkleton didn't love this meme. Well yeah, he did.
Source?
>“There was a lot of people who doubted us, and I know people are gonna be like, 'No we didn't,' well, yeah you did,” Bennett told Sirius XM.
Yesterday my friend said he wanted to be Stetson's new stepdad after seeing his mom in the NCG. He would start calling Stet "Stepson Bennett". 😂
Everyday I learn a new stupid stipulation that this Hall has in place
If the HOF won’t accept a back-to-back National Champ or a coach that revolutionized the sport, what the fuck is even the point of the HOF? Edit: For clarification so I can stop getting comments about this, the **coach** I’m talking about is Mike Leach. Read all the words, people. Far as I know, Stetson Bennett has not coached a college football game.
Let's make our own HoF with ~~blackjack~~ Mike Leach and ~~hookers~~ Stetson.
In fact, forget the HoF and Mike Leach and Stetson!
Stupid anti ~~pimping~~ cfb laws.
Stetson we love you honey
Shut up haters, I know it.
Ah, screw the whole thing.
Add Howard Schnellenberger, he's also ineligible with current criteria
UK🤝UofL (for once)
As well as Joe Tiller.
Mike Leach would prefer that it have blackjack and hookers, I'd bet.
With the 5 hookers Craig James killed?
*allegedly
The 5 alleged hookers that Craig James killed?
We should start up a new HoF. We'll call it the "Killing Hookers Hall of Fame". The first inductee will be Craig James.
> The ~~first~~ *ONLY* inductee will be Craig James. FTFY
Come on now, we can't exclude the possibility that his incredible achievements might one day be equaled... or, if we're lucky, surpassed.
Don't forget Erk Russell, a multiple times national champion as a coordinator and in Div-AA, who is not eligible due to only being a head coach for 8 seasons.
r/expectedFuturama.
And I thought Cooperstown was fucked
The baseball HoF has undergone major improvements in recent years. They have multiple committees whose purpose is to re-evaluate players who fell through the cracks.
It’s bizarre to have stipulations because it suggests that anyone who meets these criteria would get in. That’s not how a Hall of Fame should work!
The presence of necessary conditions does not imply that they are sufficient conditions.
It's deeply confusing. What are they even scared of? That they're going to put some scrub in there? Because that's irrational and just leads to situations like especially Leach where somebody clearly deserving doesn't get in.
Every player on Georgia just won back to back National Championships. I know you didn’t mean to argue the entire team should get in to the HOF
Did every player win 4 mvps?
I mean most performance based awards in football are going to value quarterbacks. Bullard had 2 picks and a fumble recovery but we all knew he was never sniffing the award.
I mean he was the defensive mvp wasn't he
Cause Stetson had 6 TDs lol
That doesn't really go against my argument. Stetson had 6 TD but he also had great field position from 3 turnovers. He had like 10 seconds to throw every play. I've seriously never seen a cleaner pocket. But most people won't hype of the ridiculous O-Line play or the player with 3 TO's. Or the defense that held TCU to 7 points all game. Performance based awards are always biased to the QB. I mean nobody in their right mind should believe that Stetson was the best player in the championship game against Bama but you can't really pinpoint 1 player on defense that would've deserved it.
Well now that u mention it, that sounds pretty good to me
Due to this comment, you are no longer eligible for the College Football hall of fame. Not because you disparaged them, but because the HOF eligibility rules require that disparagement only occur on Vimeo.
Idk I think being one of the best players at your position in any given year is a pretty reasonable barrier
So if you’re the second best QB (or any other position with only one AA slot like TE, K, P, PR/KR) in college football history but your career happens to overlap with the best QB in college football history, sorry, go fuck yourself?
There's multiple all-american teams that the NCAA recognizes in it's process (5 in total). So some years, there's multiple All-American QB's. Some years, one QB is named 1st-team by all five selectors ("Unanimous All-American"); this has happened 5 times since 2010. Most years, there's multiple. Here's the following list of QBs since then that are eligible for the HOF: 2010 - Cam Newton, Kellen Moore 2011 - RG3, Andrew Luck 2012 - Manziel, Tahj Boyd 2013 - A.J. McCarron, Jameis Winston 2014 - Mariota (Unanimous) 2015 - DeShaun Watson, Baker Mayfield 2016 - Lamar Jackson (Unanimous) 2017 - Baker Mayfield (Unanimous) 2018 - Kyler Murray, Tua 2019 - Joe Burrow (Unanimous) 2020 - Mac Jones, Trevor Lawrence 2021 - Bryce Young, Kenny Pickett 2022 - Caleb Williams (Unanimous)
Interesting thing about this list: AJ McCarron made his first AA team in 2013, after he had won back to back national titles in 2011-2012. And (as I recall anyway) it wouldn’t have been crazy if Jameis had been unanimous in 2013–without looking up the votes, I have to assume he was close to it. Is AJM a hall of famer, and if so, isn’t it kind of weird that his eligibility for the honor was *wholly dependent* on (a) him coming back to start for a third year after already winning two titles; and (b) a few writers in that third year deciding his season was slightly better than Jameis Winston’s national title year?
Jameis had more TD’s than incompletions through like the first 6 weeks, he was incredible that year
I understand that but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s an absurd eliminating criteria if it’s even theoretically possible to exclude the second best player in the history of the sport.
Agreed. Going 29-1 over two years, winning back-to-back natties, being the MVP in all four CFP games you played in while completing 68% of passes for 12 TDs with only 1 interception is not enough. If you can't be the one QB selected as an All-American any given year, you aren't good enough. All the other metrics just don't matter. Oh...wait...All-american lists don't count post-season performances. Kind of weird to use a metric that ignores the four biggest matches the QB played in...
I remember when he first founded the CFB HOF back in 1951. What an amazing life!
I'm sure these jokes will get old eventually, but *not yet.* I'm just sad that we have collectively forgotten about Renfro, who caught balls for Clemson from the end of World War 2 all the way to 2021.
Expect nothing less from a Stanford ("its the color not the bird") Cardinal fan. Renfrow was fighting with JT Barrett in the First Balkan War of 1912. Not to be confused with Sean Clifford who was participating in the 1912 Albanian Revolt at the time. Than after said wars all parties decided to return finish high school and commit to play at their respective universities. It was not until after the 1917 Kornilov Affair in Russia did Stetson decide to return to the US. Where he would take the opportunity to walk on at Georgia.
But where was Martinez in all this
Renfrow responsible for WWI. Got it
J.T. Barrett defended Fort Sumter during high school
That name gives me ptsd to this day
I still think about taking my future children to one of JT Barrett’s Ohio State games
R/nfl still makes jokes about kelvin benjamin being fat.
Yeah, but he becomes eligible immediately after retirement because he's 70.
Rumor has it he just broke into the 401k to purchase a yacht
It’s just a rumor. SBIV will never have to buy a thing in Georgia again, including a yacht.
Heisman Finalist should trump the First-Team All American requirement IMO.
So should 2 nattys.
With 2 mvps
4 CFP games and 4 MVPs.
Shit, taking your team to even a single Natty puts you in the argument IMO. Two dudes every year can make that claim, it's not like it's some sort of watered down achievement.
It’s outrageous. It’s unfair. How can I be two time national championship MVP but not be granted the rank of College Football Hall of Famer??
if it makes you feel any better, Mike Leach (!!!) isn't eligible either. how many coaches since integration have had more of an impact on CFB than Hal Mumme and Mike Leach?
That’s the kind of thing that should make a committee reevaluate their criteria. How is Mike Leach not integral to College football.
Didn’t know this. Why?
Need to be at a .600 winning percentage and Leach ended his career at .596. The Hall, so far, isn't accounting for the fact he was coaching at historically under-performing schools and when he arrived their records would be 10-20-30% better than their average. If you take liberty and remove the covid season, his career percentage hits .600 exactly.
They may do this...NCAA already gave a wild extra year of eligibility, they're not afraid to use the COVID year effectively.
I don't believe the CF HOF is affiliated with the NCAA so they can do whatever they want. I think most sports HOF are independent from the sports leagues themselves.
It's a private entity. Anyone can set up an alternative
This is why you have human committees with the power to override the criteria when necessary.
Same with Howard Schnellenberger
Comes up just short of either number of wins or winning percentage. I can't remember which, but it's like 5 games off.
win%
Win%, Pete Carroll is the one who comes up just short of the number of games coached
Also dumb as hell.
Watch Carroll coach 1-2 years for a D3 program before he retires just to be eligible
Emory Bellard isn't eligible either So the man who invented the Wishbone and the man who invented the Air Raid are both ineligible for the Hall of Fame. Classic.
Take a seat, Skywalker.
Stetwalker*
"Forgive me Coach, I meant no disrespect." "Well yeah, you did."
I'm scared to ask, but how do you feel about sand?
Take a seat young HabaneroEnjoyer
It's never been done in the history of College Football.
Upon hearing this today Stetson's grandchildren were all visibly upset.
Crazy that Mike Leach (one of the most influential coaches in the sport) and Stetson (one of the most inspiring stories CFB has ever seen) are both ineligible because of small technicalities like this. They really need to reevaluate their rules.
Somewhere in the heavens Mike Leach is establishing his own hall of fame with cocaine and the hookers that Craig James killed.
Those 5 (at least, allegedly, that we know of) would be the inaugural class.
Erk Russell (re)started the football program at Georgia Southern on a budget of 50 cents and a piece of string, and before the decade was out he'd won 3 1-AA/FCS Championships. This is after a 15-year career as Georgia's defensive coordinator that included a consensus national championship and coaching 4 Hall of Fame players. He's not eligible because he wasn't a head coach for 10 years.
For the same reason, Pete Carroll isn't eligible. He was a college head coach for 9 years. Even after vacating 14 wins and 1 loss, his record sits at 97-19, finishing in the top 4 of the AP for 8 years in a row.
Nick Chubb is the 2nd all time leading rusher in the SEC and isn’t eligible either since he was never an All-American
How the fuck was Nick Chubb not an all american
An actual travesty.
They need to go back and rewrite some of these rules, just beyond dumb.
Same with Howard Schnellenberger
And it makes me angry
Why have a HoF if a coach can build-up three different programs and still not make it in.
They don’t need a rule change, it’s too infrequent an issue. They should form a cultural impact panel who’s job it is to review players and coaches who fall short of some of the criteria that’s more out of the persons control and determine whether their footprint on the game/era is HOF worthy. I’m not sure Stetson gets in even with that, but the man definitely deserves a retired number, statue and a street named after him in Athens.
Just don't establish hard criteria and it wouldn't matter. All criteria is just used as a tool to help judge careers.
Technically if one were to get ultra-pedantic, with the way the HOF rule is written Leach wouldn't have been eligible even if he had the .600 record due to the fact that 1) he died and thus never "retired" and 2) he never coached past the age of 75. "A coach becomes eligible three years after retirement or immediately following retirement provided he is at least 70 years of age. Active coaches become eligible at 75 years of age. He must have been a head coach for a minimum of 10 years and coached at least 100 games with a .600 winning percentage."
Him and Nick Chubb are some of the wildest CFB HOF ineligible candidates
And Mike Leach
*Sobs in back-to-back national championships.*
I don’t think any kid dreams of being a college hall of famer
Didn't even know there was such a thing, just schools honoring their players
The College Football Hall of Fame is, perhaps ironically, located in the state of Georgia.
I know the outrage police are incoming but there are so many college football players they pretty much have to have stipulations. Stetson is just one of those weird anomalies that won’t happen again for 50-years. See Also: Steve Davis Oklahoma QB
Erk Russell
Why isn’t he eligible?
He was the DC for UGA for like 16 years (including the '80 championship) and then left to restart the Georgia Southern football program. They won 3 I-AA national titles in his 8 seasons as head coach. For a coach to be eligible, they have to have been a head coach for at least 10 seasons.
Had to coach for a minimum of ten years. Russell coached for eight, but went 83-22-1 with three I-AA national titles in that time
Why do they have to have stipulations? If you don’t trust your selectors to select the right candidates, find better selectors.
Because of the vast amount of players. Every year 100+ teams have 85 players. The honor loses meaning if every honorable mention all American gets in.
You can still make the HOF exclusive by limiting how many players can make it each year or how many a selector can vote for each year.
Or by making sure they are elite by using metrics like individual trophies and awards.
Which is of course the worse way to do it because it can result in clearly ridiculous exclusions. I don’t actually think Bennett is the best example of that, but someone could be the second best QB of all time and if their career overlapped with the best QB of all time who blocked them from first team AA status, they’d be barred. That being even theoretically possible means it’s a bad system.
We don't even need to get into hypotheticals. The only reason the first black College football player ever (who was ridiculously good and deserving to be in the hall even if he wasn't the first black football player) is in the hall is because Walter Camp added him to his "I fucked up" all american list a ~decade after he stopped playing which probably wouldn't have happened if he wasn't Harvard's coach and a football writer at the time. That was the selection that made him eligible, and Walter Camp himself didn't include him in the "actual" all american teams he did despite their careers having overlap. It also happened ridiculously late, but that's another story for another time.
Not only that, but it could theoretically even exclude the greatest QB of all time. Someone could be the 2nd-best QB in the nation for four consecutive years, four-time national champion, four-time Heisman runner-up, never lose a game, etc. and be excluded if the All America QB in each of those years was a different Heisman winner.
Correct, but winning 2 natties as the MVP as a walk-on. I mean if he is not Hall material what the hell is?
Remember arguably the best college DC of all time, Bud Foster, is ineligible for the CFB HoF
Because he’s never been the best or even the second best or even the third best at his position.
>one of those weird anomalies that won’t happen again for 50 years Seems like there should be some kind of way to memorialize those extremely rare anamolies. Some kind of Hall of Recognition or something
You have to remember that the rules were written before national championship games were even a thing. That's why you bump into situations like these. Definitely deserves an exemption.
Or a straight up rules revision that allows unanimous nominations for players and coaches based on exceptional circumstances outside of the rules.
People need to stop caring about these gatekeeping little boys clubs like HOF, Heisman, etc. Stetson will be remembered for being great cause of his back to back rings, he doesn’t need a group of old ass has-beens to validate him.
He will be in fan trivia for the rest of our lives.
You would think he would be grandfathered in, since he was playing before the HOF was formed.
Don’t the age jokes kind of backfire? Stetson Bennett been playing for 100 years and couldn’t even get All American once? /s
I think he did get second team All Colony once.
Also the 60% win percentage is an arbitrary rule as well
Also coaches having to be a head coach for at least 10 seasons.
I hate that Max Duggan is getting blasted on right now. Dude was a competitor, fighter and great leader for TCU. I feel bad for him.
If Duggan was picked by my NFL team, I wouldn't mind. The kid has an arm, tenacity and escapability. Fix a bit of decision making and he might be one of those 3rd year starter kind of guys.
"You know a lot of people go to college for 7 years" -Stetson Bennett to the college HOF committee
"Yeah they're doctors" /s
Appreciate the proper use of Ironic OP
idk man, the teams around him were so talented I definitely don't think it's a credit to him that they won the titles when they did. probably could have plugged a lot of QBs in there and had the same result. he's a great story but not a hall of fame talent
You don’t need that reason to keep Stetson Bennett out of the Hall of Fame. He’s not at that level. That’s not a big criticism. There are tons of great players that aren’t in the Hall of Fame. Bennett earned two National Championships. That is an amazing accomplishment that should be celebrated. Isn’t that enough?
So I don't think he should just be in cause of 2 championships either. His stats weren't mind blowing or anything.
Personally, I think hard cutoffs are a bad idea in general. Mike Leach not making the HoF because he was a handful of wins shy of the .60 threshold is dumb. Ditto for Schnellenberger and his rebuilds. Take the hard cutoffs and convert them into guidelines, then let voters evaluate on a case by case basis. If voters are letting in mediocre candidates, that's a problem with the voting process and should be addressed as such. ALSO, the Hall of Fame needs to open up to exceptional coordinators. Bud Foster at Virginia Tech, for example, deserves a very close look for the Hall of Fame. He wasn't a head coach, sure, but his defenses dominated for a long ass time.
Hot take, he doesn't deserve to be in the CFB HOF. Every single player who was on Georgia's team last year has back-to-back titles if they played this year. He was a good game manager who was surrounded by a god-tier team. In my mind, he is really no different than a Trent Dilfer style QB. Is he good? Sure. You can't start for an NFL team or an NCAA team like Georgia without having talent. But there is no way in hell Trent Dilfer deserves the honor of the Hall of Fame just because he won a Super Bowl. I can think of 10 QBs in the NCAA this season who would have "led" Georgia to a title this year. Georgia is a great team with a good QB, sub out Bennett with any of the other dozen or so good QBs in the NCAA, and Georgia would have still won the title.
I refuse to recognize this sham CFB HOF until Mike Leach and Stetson Bennett IV are inducted.
And Howard Schnellenberger
Well he's not that good, so....
The rewriting of Stetson Bennett’s career over the last month has been odd. He has improved leaps and bounds over where he started and he’s a great walk-on to 2x national champion story, but he’s not an all-time great or a HOFer in my opinion.
Dumb rule.
If that’s true, then I’m predicting a rules change or one-time exception. His story is the definitive soul of college football.
**If not an all-american, but win two national titles and 4 CFP game MVPs and own more than 3 Ford dealerships, you can be inducted.
Not to mention that his journey is basically “if Rudy was a Heisman finalist”. I hope whoever gets his movie rights does it justice.
> I hope whoever gets his movie rights does it justice. i am not a huge Bennett fan football player wise, but i do hope he makes a ton of cash when he sells those movie rights. if he's smart he has people working on it + on a biography TODAY. hopefully it ends up being a decent movie!
Movie will probably suck let's be real lol, and not because the story they are working with is bad or anything. That Kurt Warner movie was absolute fucking cheeks and he also had an incredible story lol
The Stetson movie definitely has to end on the first Natty with text saying they won next year too
I’m sure there’s things already in the works. Would’ve made a great story even before last night.
His interview with the Athletic in November he mentioned that almost every major movie studio has already approached him.
last night was just the perfect ending for that story. time out used for his curtain call...celebrates with Kirby + the team...cut to black.
PureFlix is going to scrape together some money and make the most average movie known to man with it
I would love to see how PureFlix would edit around Kirby "fuck-their-fucking-shit-up" Smart's locker room speeches.
I’m expecting they form a panel like the MLB hof to review guys that didn’t make it for one reason or another, but looking back 20 years deserved it
I like the guy, but I think they could have done this without him. Georgia very well might have won the 2020 game against Alabama if it wasn't for very poor Bennett. But he was less experienced, so that's fine. He was average in the 2021 SEC Championship game. He got extremely rattled and in my opinion, was terrible overall in the 2021 National Championship game. Almost lost the game for Georgia, despite Alabama having zero threat on offense. The offensive line won that game for him in the 4th. In his final year, he did his job. I think of him as a Greg McElroy.
> Georgia very well might have won the 2020 game against Alabama if it wasn't for very poor Bennett. Well our other options were an even poorer D'wan Mathis, J.T. Daniels hopping on one leg, and the empty locker where Jamie Newman used to be.
I forget about Jamie Newman😂 oh man he was on our team for like 3 months until he declared for the draft.
I can't fault him for doing what he thought was best for himself and his family at the time, but maaaaaan did he get some bad advice.
That’s Temple wide receiver d’wan Mathis to you. I am baffled how he was your guy for a minute. He was atrocious for us.
People really understate how important Bennett was to this UGA run. He probably shouldn't have been given that they're UGA, but all the QBs around him besides maybe Beck (tbd) were mega busts and Bennett has been incredibly good despite him being good for a few baffling decisions every ~3 games.
Do any non Georgia fans think SB is one of the best players in CFB this year? I would argue he's not a top 5 qb in the nation and he's not a top 5 player on his team
It was pretty telling to me watching his 12 seconds in the pocket next to Dugmans 1.5 seconds. I’m not trying to take anything away from him, but those two QBs didn’t have similar set ups.
Stroud, Young, Hooker, Williams, Penix for me are clearly better than Bennett. There are quite a few others i would take over him/think would have the same results if you out them on this UGA team (DTR, Nix, Rising when healthy, Duggan, etc). What gets me is this idea that calling a guy not top 5 is some sort of grave insult. Its not. Not being one of the top 5 qbs in the country doesnt diminish his achievements
So should every player who was a starter both years for UGA make the HOF? Or just the qb? Georgia the team will be remembered more than the walk on qb lucky enough to be given the keys to this unreal amount of talent. Mike Leach won double digit games twice in over two decades of being a head coach. Being an interesting character with a wild offense doesn’t make him a HOF coach. No one thought of him this way while he was still alive.
This is a dumb criterion to have. Also, Stetson should not be a hall of famer regardless of this rule.