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You could make a lot of cases for Desmond Howard going into the SB Nation College Football Hall of Fame. After all, his 19 receiving touchdowns in 1991 -- still a Michigan record for a single season -- undoubtedly played a big part of his Heisman Trophy win that season. But so did his skill at returning kicks and punts, and so he is inducted to the Hall as our special teams/athlete for this class.
Howard's 1990 season included a 29.6-yard average on kick returns, No. 2 in Michigan history, and a 15.7-yard average on punt returns, still the school record. Howard's career average of 26.9 yards on kickoff returns is also a school mark to this day, as is the 22.4 yard overall return average. Howard holds the longest punt return in Michigan history -- a 93-yard touchdown that brought on his famous Heisman moment.
There might have been more to Howard than a return specialist, but that was one of the areas where he most definitively left a mark on the game. So Desmond Howard is a unanimous selection for the first special-teams player in the SB Nation College Football Hall of Fame.
For more on Wolverines football, visit Michigan blog Maize 'n' Brew, plus Big Ten blog Off Tackle Empire and SB Nation Detroit.
The SB Nation College Football Hall of Fame is a summer project involving all of the network's excellent college football blogs. Each community nominated 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 inaugural class' first 10 will be revealed Monday and Tuesday, while the remaining 10 will be chosen by public vote Wednesday and Thursday.
