Mike Singletary Inducted into the SBNation College Football Hall of Fame

A couple of weeks ago I asked Baylor fans to help me with submissions for a project SBNation was starting: a college football Hall of Fame. The requirements (had to be out of the game more than 5 years) eliminated most of Baylor's positive recent history (RG3, Kendall Wright, etc.), and I needed help with names from Baylor's mostly-checkered past. I received several emails and people posted comments with suggestions ranging from Daryl Gardner, the mountainous DT anchoring Baylor's defensive line in the early 90s, to Daniel Sepulveda, the only bright spot on several otherwise lackluster teams in the Guy Morriss era, to Grant Teaff, the legendary Baylor coach and executive director of the American Football Coaches Association.

Most of the comments shared a few names like the ones I've listed, but every suggestion I received, no matter the format or the source, had one name: Mike Singletary, the greatest defensive player in Baylor history and one of the best all-time in the NFL. He is as close to a defensive legend as Baylor has or is likely to have and has now been chosen as the first linebacker in the SBNation College Football Hall of Fame.

Just one slice of why from the mothership:

Singletary is the kind of player with statistics that almost make your eyes fall out of your head. He was credited with 33 tackles in a 1978 game against Arkansas. That is not a typo. What's perhaps more amazing is that he had 199 tackles in the other games he played, for a total of 232 on the 1978 season. As you might imagine, his career number is also pretty gaudy: 662, 351 of them solo. All of those are Baylor records, in case you needed to ask.

Congratulations, Samurai Mike, on being a part of the inaugural class for the SBNation College Football Hall of Fame! Singletary joins Syracuse's Dwight Freeney and Alabama's Bear Bryant in today's 5-member group focusing on defense and special teams. Yesterday's group covered offense and included Orlando Pace, Ozzie Newsome, Randy Moss, Ricky Williams, and Vince Young (a lot of Texas voters out there, apparently).