RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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The Pro Football Hall of Fame welcomes five new legends into Canton on Saturday. Their NFL résumés are what ultimately earned them the gold jacket, but each built a college legacy long before becoming household names on Sundays.
Two members of this year's class, Larry Fitzgerald and Luke Kuechly, were recently inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, while Drew Brees remains one of the most decorated players in Big Ten history. Roger Craig starred at Nebraska before helping redefine the running back position in the NFL, and Adam Vinatieri left South Dakota State as one of the greatest specialists in program history.
Despite their individual success, none of the five won a college national championship. Together, however, they captured eight Super Bowl titles, proving their biggest team accomplishments came at the next level.
Some entered the NFL as college football royalty. Others became much bigger stars as professionals than they ever were on Saturdays. Here's how the five Hall of Famers stack up based solely on their college careers, broken into tiers.
No one in this class left campus with a résumé this stacked. Kuechly was a dominant force from his first snaps at Boston College , racking up 158 tackles as a true freshman in 2009 en route to ACC Defensive Rookie of the Year and first-team All-ACC honors.
As a sophomore in 2010, he became a unanimous All-American, leading the nation with 183 tackles while finishing as Butkus Award runner-up. Then, in 2011, he authored one of the great individual seasons in college football history: an FBS-record 191 tackles, a sweep of the Butkus Award, Bronko Nagurski Trophy and Lott Impact Trophy, and consensus All-American honors for a second time.
Kuechly still owns two of the three highest single-season tackle totals in FBS history.
He led the FBS in total tackles in back-to-back seasons and the ACC in solo tackles all three years he played. By the time he left Chestnut Hill, Kuechly not only owned Boston College's career tackles record with 532, he held the all-time FBS record too, a mark that now ranks third.
Fitzgerald spent just two years at Pittsburgh , but few players have accomplished more in less time.
As a freshman in 2002, he burst onto the national scene with 69 catches for 1,005 yards and 12 touchdowns, setting the stage for one of the greatest sophomore seasons in college football history.
He followed with a virtually unstoppable 2003 campaign hauling in 92 catches for 1,672 yards and 22 touchdowns against defenses that rarely tried guarding him with just one man.
He became the first sophomore ever to win the Walter Camp Player of the Year Award and also earned the Biletnikoff Award as the nation's top receiver, on top of unanimous All-American honors. He came within 128 points of winning the Heisman Trophy outright that year, the closest a wide receiver had gotten to the trophy since Desmond Howard took it home in 1991.
Across just 26 collegiate games, Fitzgerald had 161 catches for 2,677 yards and 34 touchdowns.
Brees arrived at Purdue as somewhat of an afterthought and left as a record-setting machine.
After serving as the backup in 1997, he took over the starting role in 1998 and immediately set school and Big Ten records for pass attempts (569), completions (361), yards passing (3,983) and touchdown passes (39) in a single season. Over the next two years, he refined his game, cutting down interceptions and adding a real running threat. By 2000, he was the FBS leader in total offense (358.1 yards per game).
He finished his Purdue career with two NCAA records, 13 Big Ten records and 19 school records and ranked as the conference's all-time leader in completions and yards passing. Brees was a two-time Heisman finalist, a two-time Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year and a two-time first-team All-Big Ten selection, capping his senior season with the Maxwell Award and Big Ten MVP honors.
Purdue finished in the AP Top 25 all four years that Brees was on campus and has done so only once since his departure.
Craig was at Nebraska during a stretch when a national championship remained frustratingly elusive for Tom Osborne, but he was one of the most dependable backs for the Huskers on rosters stacked with future pros.
He announced himself as a sophomore in 1980, scoring 15 touchdowns despite starting the year buried on the depth chart, then had his defining season in 1981, splitting carries with Mike Rozier in a backfield that combined for more than 2,000 rushing yards.
Craig closed his career just three yards shy of cracking Nebraska's top three all-time rushers, an especially impressive number considering he shared the backfield with Mike Rozier, who would win the Heisman Trophy the following season.
The Jackrabbits were a Division II program when Vinatieri was in Brookings, meaning he was always going to face a steep climb to the NFL. What he did at South Dakota State, though, was legitimately special.
Vinatieri handled both kicking and punting duties, earning All-North Central Conference recognition as a kicker in 1992 and as a punter in each of his final three seasons, then capped his career with Division II All-America punting honors as a senior.
He set the program's single-season punting average record at 43.5 yards, left as its career leader in field goals and extra points and shared its record for longest field goal at 51 yards. Most of those marks have since fallen, but at the time, it was as complete a two-way specialist résumé as college football produced.
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