Alabama's Derrick Thomas Inducted Into SB Nation College Football Hall of Fame

There's no doubt that this year's inaugural class of the SB Nation Hall of Fame is going to have a decidedly red hue, particularly given that many of the game's traditional powerhouses like some shade of red. And one of the game's powerhouses likes the shade of red that we call "crimson."

Alabama gets another nominee into the Hall of Fame with Derrick Thomas, a superstar defensive lineman for the Tide in the late 1980s. Our SEC blog, Team Speed Kills, summed up Thomas' career this way:

The only people who should have a problem with Derrick Thomas' inclusion on the list are the players who were in the opposing backfields. Thomas collected 27 sacks at Alabama -- in a single season. If the sack were an official statistic then, Thomas would hold the record. He had 52 for his career. Tackles for loss? 39 in that 1988 season and 68 in his career.

Thomas captured 73 percent of the vote in our fan poll. He joins Dwight Freeney of Syracuse in the first class of defensive linemen inducted.

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The SB Nation College Football Hall of Fame is a summer project involving all of the network's excellent college football blogs. Each community could nominate five of its own for inclusion, with 10 of those nominees being inducted by our selection committee, which included reps from most FBS conferences. The remaining 10 were chosen by public vote.