Blue White Illustrated

There's one more Dozier-Barkley paral- lel from their freshman seasons, as they both broke into the starting lineup in NFL stadiums after the season was well under way. Dozier started against Rutgers in the fifth game at the New Jersey Meadow- lands, and Barkley in the eighth game against Maryland at Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium. At that juncture, they took different paths. A pinched nerve in his shoulder curtailed Dozier in his seventh and eighth games, while Barkley, who had missed the Army and Indiana games ear- lier in the season with a leg injury, re- mained unscathed the rest of the way. From gold to green Another major difference between the two was in their recruitment. Barkley was a four-star Pennsylvania running back who had committed early to Rutgers and then switched to Penn State before signing day. Dozier was rated one of the elite backs in the nation at Virginia Beach, Va., and didn't realize Penn State was that interested in him until late in the recruiting process. "I would get a letter or a call from Penn State about every two weeks, first from John Rosenberg and after he left [for an- other job] from Bob Phillips, whereas I was getting inundated from other schools," Dozier said. "You get five offi- cial visits, and I had visited Notre Dame, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia Tech. My last visit was between Penn State, Alabama, UCLA and Nebraska. I knew Penn State had just won the na- tional championship and Curt Warner was graduating, so I saw an immediate opportunity and chose Penn State. "When I got on campus, I met with the dean of the business school and Joe and had a terrific time with [linebacker] Rogers Alexander, who was my host. I liked staying in the student dorms and not a hotel, in the same type of environ- ment I would [experience] as a student, and not an athletic dorm like at other schools. Ultimately, the reason I chose Penn State was because the combination of academics and athletics was matchless compared to the other schools. I also be- lieve from the spiritual standpoint that it was meant to be, and I've never looked back." Reporting in August for his first presea- son practice, he was given a gold jersey. He soon found out that meant he was on the sixth team, just ahead of the white jersey walk-ons. As the days and weeks passed, he continued to wear the gold jer- sey but also began seeing time with the second-team "greenies," more and more as the season opener drew closer. Penn State's first game in 1983 was in a new event set up by the NCAA called the Kick- off Classic in the Meadowlands. The pro- moters believed they had a classic matchup between defending national champion Penn State and Nebraska, the D.J. Dozier's outstanding Penn State career is worthy of being enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame. From 2009 through 2017, Dozier was among the 75 or so players nominated annually for the next class of Hall of Fame inductees. As part of the process of selecting the 15 to 17 players in- ducted into the pantheon each year, a special committee within the hall's parent organization, the National Football Foundation, makes the final decision. The public participates by being a general member of the foun- dation and voting in an election. Dozier's name was not on the ballot for the class of 2018 when Kerry Collins, quarterback of Penn State's great 1994 team, was elected. Collins and the others chosen by the commit- tee will be formally inducted at the foundation's banquet this December in New York. With the enshrinement of Collins, Penn State will have 18 players and six coaches (two of whom also played for the Lions) in the College Football Hall of Fame. It has been four years since the previous Penn State player, line- backer Shane Conlan, was inducted, and seven years between Conlan's entry and tailback Curt Warner's in- duction in 2007. All this does not bode well for Dozier's future chances of joining Collins, Conlan, Warner and the other Nittany Lions. Despite his superb cre- dentials, including his role as the cen- terpiece of Penn State's offense for four years, he is not always mentioned alongside the school's other great running backs, such as Warner and hall of famer Lydell Mitchell (2004), or Collins' teammate, Ki-Jana Carter, who certainly will be a future nomi- nee. There also are Penn State All- Americans at other positions who could be nominated, and to be fair to all colleges, the Hall of Fame officials have tried to control the number of players inducted from each school. Dozier deserves a better fate. Be- cause eligible players can still be nominated nearly 50 years after their last college game, Dozier still may have a chance. But now it looks like a long shot. ■ L O U ' S V I E W L O U P R A T O O N P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L H I S T O R Y FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION A frequent candidate, Dozier deserves a place in the College Football Hall of Fame

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