Here's why Wofford's Eric Breitenstein is on ballot for College Football Hall of Fame
Eric Breitenstein is a Wofford Hall of Famer and that spot was secured before his senior year.
There were already discussions about placing a monument for his jersey No. 7 on the hill underneath the Gibbs Stadium football scoreboard along with the only other two honored numbers in Wofford football history, the No. 1 of former quarterback Shawn Graves and the No. 51 of a former NFL wide receiver, the late Jerry Richardson.
Breitenstein is also a Southern Conference Hall of Famer and that spot might have been secured in a 2012 game at Elon, where he rushed for a league-record 321 yards on the way to 2,035 for the season, second-most in league history.
The latest nomination is even bigger.
Breitenstein is on the official ballot for the College Football Hall of Fame.
Breitenstein set the Wofford record with 1,639 rushing yards in 2010, shattered that mark as a senior, and finished his career with 32 games of at least 100 yards. In 2012, he tied the NCAA record with 11 straight 100-yard games.
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He was twice named Southern Conference offensive player of the year. He was inducted into Wofford’s Hall of Fame in 2017, had is jersey retired by the school in 2019 and made the SoCon Hall of Fame in 2020.
Breitenstein is longshot again, just like he was at Watauga High School in North Carolina, in the mountains around Appalachian State, where he was overlooked, underappreciated and never offered a scholarship.
The College Football Hall of Fame this year includes a ballot of 78 players and nine coaches from the Football Bowl Subdivision and then 101 players and 32 coaches from the divisional ranks.
An announcement will be made in January and the class will be officially inducted Dec. 10, 2024, in Las Vegas.
This article originally appeared on Herald-Journal: Wofford's Eric Breitenstein on College Football Hall of Fame ballot
