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At long last, Mike Leach is eligible to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, and not a moment too soon.
It was too late for The Pirate to see it himself after he died of long-standing health complications in 2022. But starting next year, he will be eligible for consideration after the National Football Foundation adjusted its strict criteria to allow coaches in at a .595 win mark instead of the traditional .600. He will also be three years removed from coaching, which is the minimum.
Leach was perhaps the most painful case to miss consideration. He sat at a .598 mark after 21 years as a head coach. If he had even just lived long enough to coach Mississippi State’s 19-10 win over Illinois in the ReliaQuest Bowl, he would have hit the benchmark. Keeping one of the game’s most impactful coach out over such a tiny detail would have been a tragedy.
When pressed in the past, NFF officials downplayed the idea that they would adjust their rules to get Leach into the hall.
“There hasn’t been any wriggling of that [.600 number],” NFF president Steve Hatchell told CBS Sports in 2024. “I was told by George Steinbrenner and a bunch of other guys that were on the board for a long time, ‘Hatchell, these are the rules. You stay with the rules come hell or high water.'”
On Thursday, Hatchell changed his tone.
“The NFF is committed to preserving the integrity and prestige of the NFF College Football Hall of Fame,” Hatchell said in a statement. “This adjustment reflects thoughtful dialogue with leaders across the sport and allows us to better recognize coaches whose contributions to the game extend beyond a narrow statistical threshold.”
Lincoln Riley says College Football…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/mike-leachs-eligibility-fixes-hall-of-fames-most-egregious-snub-but-doesnt-solve-broken-selection-criteria/
Author : Shehan Jeyarajah
Publish date : 2025-05-29 18:35:00
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