Trevor Cobb
Rice University
Running Back, 1989-92

• Consensus First Team All-American and claimed Doak Walker Award in 1991.
• 1992 SWC Player of the Year led team to first winning season in 30 years.
• First Owl and fourth SWC player to rush for more than 1,000 yards in three consecutive seasons.
• Played for coach Fred Goldsmith.
• Becomes the seventh Owl player to enter the Hall.

Trevor Cobb was supposed to be a baseball player. He grew up playing shortstop, idolizing Ozzie Smith. His uncle, Cliff Johnson, enjoyed a 15-year Major League career. But Trevor's father — who also was a baseball guy — had always told his son to be a well-rounded athlete, and to play other sports.

That advice proved beneficial during Cobb's freshman year of high school, when an arm injury on the diamond inadvertently set off a career on the gridiron that opened many doors and brought him to unthinkable heights. Cobb is the seventh former Rice player to make the College Football Hall of Fame, punctuating a career that saw the running back win the Doak Walker Award in 1991 and lead the Owls to their first winning season in 30 years in 1992.

The Houston native never saw this coming when he chose to play for his city back in 1989, which ended up being the only season in which he didn't rush for 1,000 yards.

"I wanted to stay home, I wanted my parents to go to every game and I loved the Southwest Conference," Cobb said. "I wanted to play my freshman year, which I did. (It was) a combination of everything. My dad worked in NASA (and) worked with a bunch of Rice people."

A three-time all-conference selection who holds almost every Rice rushing record, Cobb amassed 6,512 career all-purpose yard, a mark which stands as the best in Southwest Conference history, and his career rushing total of 4,948 yards placed him eighth in NCAA history at the time and 24th at the start of the 2018 season.

A member of the State of Texas Sports and the Southwest Conference halls of fame, Cobb's other top accolades include being named the 1992 Southwest Conference Offensive Player of the Year and Male Athlete of the Year (across all sports). He set 17 school records, including career rushing touchdowns (38) and career 100-yard games (24), and he still holds the top three rushing seasons in school history, capped by his 1,692 yards in 1991.

Several of the offensive linemen who blocked for Cobb will be with him in New York for the NFF Annual Awards Dinner in December. He sees the achievement as a team effort, although it's nothing compared to the work he does now as the director of a nonprofit, Trevor's Helping Hands in Houston.

Cobb and his foundation mentor young athletes and help promote better attitudes and understanding of those with special needs. He has dealt with his own personal health challenges, having suffered a stroke in 2013 that initially paralyzed some of the left side of his body and temporarily forced him to a wheelchair. He says he was around 450 pounds at the time of the stroke, but he has worked hard in the years since to get below 250. (His playing weight was around 200.)

Working with the foundation has been incredibly rewarding. He is writing a book, too. None of these opportunities, he says, are possible without the game of football.

"I look back and it's unbelievable; it just opened up so many doors and so many honors," Cobb said of the sport. "And of course I couldn't have done it by myself. Without my teammates and family and friends, it's truly a team, group effort. Some of the stuff I can remember, some I can't, but all the two-a-days and three-a days...I loved practice, though, believe it or not. Of course everybody likes the games, too."

Cobb will officially be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame during the 61st NFF Annual Awards Dinner on Dec. 4 in New York City.