(This is the 10th and final part in a series profiling this year's inductees for the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame and Wall of Honor, which have been posted every week at baylorbears.com.)
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
As the Gatorade Track & Field Athlete of the Year in Texas and one of the state's most highly sought football prospects, Robert Griffin III thought he was going to come to Baylor and "be the big dog on campus from an athletic standpoint."
And that 2011 Heisman Trophy sitting in the Simpson Center front lobby actually backs it up, but "I just remember having to go up against Justin Fenty and Jay Finley and those guys, and they were beating the brakes off me," he said.
"I was like, 'What's going on?''' said RG3, part of the 2022 Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame class that will be inducted Friday night. "What I realized in those 4-8 seasons (in 2008 and '09) was that this university had talent, the team had talent, it just didn't know how to win."
Coming back from a torn ACL that he suffered in the third game of his true sophomore season, Griffin helped the Bears end a 15-year bowl drought in 2010 and then capped his collegiate career and 10-3 Heisman season with a 67-56 shootout victory over Washington in the Alamo Bowl.
"I honestly wish that Joe Pawelek and Jordan Lake, Dan Gay and Jason Smith, J.D. Walton, I wish those guys could have been here for the 2011 season," RG3 said, "because it was all their hard work and dedication in those 4-8 seasons that helped us get to that point in 2011. And I wish we could have that for them because they certainly deserve it."
Since those back-to-back 4-8 seasons, the Bears have won three Big 12 championships over the last decade and are headed to a bowl game for the 11
th time in 13 years.
"But, without those years, we wouldn't have been able to cherish 2010 and 2011 and, of course the subsequent years, the way that we did, because we knew how hard it was to get there and the grind that it took. I'm blessed that those 4-8 teams are part of the reason we have McLane Stadium, the on-campus stadium now. Floyd Casey might not be there, but all of my memories are from Floyd Casey, and that'll carry with me for the rest of my life."
Memories that he almost didn't have.
A two-sport standout at Copperas Cove High School, Griffin set the state records in both the 110- (13.55) and 300-meter hurdles (35.33), a mark that was one-hundredth of a second off the national prep record.
Enrolling at Baylor a semester early, Robert was 17 years old when he started classes in January 2008.
Dividing time between spring football and the track, Griffin won the Big 12 and NCAA regional titles in the 400-meter hurdles and finished third at the NCAA Outdoor Championships with a time of 49.55.
And then, at the U.S. Olympic Trials that summer in Eugene, Ore., Griffin made it through the preliminary round and missed making the semifinals by 13 hundredths of a second.
"I finished 11
th at the Olympic Trials as an 18-year-old kid, and I was thinking about going pro in track and field at the time. It was a dream of mine to run in the Olympics and represent the U.S.," he said. "Coach (Art) Briles went to the Olympic Trials to watch me run, which meant a lot as one of his players, who had never really played in college yet. And he went because he knew that if he hadn't, I was not coming back.
"He told me after I ran my race in the semifinals and missed the finals by one spot, he said, 'You told me you were coming back and you would give me at least one year of football.' And, honestly, that decision to come back and play that one year at Baylor University changed my life forever, because I wasn't making decisions based off of money, I was making decisions based on passion."
Giving up track the next spring to "fully dedicate myself to football," RG3 added 20 pounds of muscle. With the Bears off to a 2-1 start, though, he suffered an ACL injury that forced him to miss the last nine games of the 2009 season.
"That was the defining moment of my career in college," he said, "because at that moment, the rest of the season I missed football and I missed being out there with my teammates.
"I remember vividly going coming to the facility, and having to do rehab, and watching my teammates walk out the doors to go to the fields. It was heartbreaking to me because I felt like I wasn't part of the team anymore. That was the moment that I truly started loving football. And from that point on, it was all football for me."
Earning Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year honors as a redshirt sophomore in 2010, Griffin passed for 3,501 yards and 22 touchdowns, added 635 yards and eight TDs on the ground and led the Bears to a 7-6 record and trip to the Texas Bowl in Houston.
That set the stage for a phenomenal junior season that saw him pass for a school-record 4,293 yards and 37 touchdowns and add 699 yards and 10 TDs rushing. His "Heisman moment" came in a 45-38 win over No. 5 Oklahoma – Baylor's first ever over the Sooners – when he threw for 476 yards and connected with Terrance Williams for a 34-yard touchdown with eight seconds left.
Winning the Davey O'Brien and Manning Awards and beating out Stanford's Andrew Luck for the Heisman Trophy, Griffin declared for the 2012 NFL Draft and was taken with the No. 2 pick overall by the Washington Redskins.
Griffin set or tied 54 school records at Baylor and is one of three players in FBS history to throw for 10,000-plus yards (10,366) and run for 2,000-plus yards (2,254), along with Dan LeFevour and Colin Kaepernick.
After leading the Redskins to the playoffs, Griffin was named the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2012, and played seven more seasons in the league before becoming a college football and NFL analyst with ESPN.
"The work that I put in as a player is the same work that I'm putting in as a broadcaster," he said. "What you're saying controls the narrative about that person, and I don't ever want to do a disservice because I felt like I was done a disservice at times throughout my career. So, I take that responsibility seriously."
Joining Griffin in the 2022 Hall of Fame class are Jeremy Alcorn (men's golf), Tweety Carter (men's basketball), Taylor Barnes Fallon (volleyball), Doak Field (football), Josh Ludy (baseball) and track and field's Gary Kafer and Quentin Iglehart-Summers.
The Hall of Fame banquet is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 18, in the Cashion Building Banquet Room on the Baylor University campus. Limited tickets remain at $50 per person, and can be purchased by contacting the "B" Association at 254-710-3045 or by email at
tammy_hardin@baylor.edu.
