Huff was the first Texas player to win the Thorpe Award
Former Texas Longhorns safety Michael Huff has been selected among the latest entrants to the College Football Hall of Fame. Famously for Texas football fans, Huff was named in the defensive MVP after Texas beat USC in the 2005 Rose Bowl and won the national championship.
Legendary
Michael Huff is a member of the 2025 College Football Hall of Fame Class!@Huffy247 x @NFFNetwork x @cfbhall pic.twitter.com/R5KwPu4QVJ
— Texas Football (@TexasFootball) January 15, 2025
“This is an incredible honor and an unbelievable blessing for my family. Growing up in Texas, playing for the Longhorns was a dream come true, and now representing my school and program that changed my life is such an honor and privilege. This is a tribute to the great teams I played on, the awesome teammates and coaches I was so fortunate to play with and for, and of course, Mack Brown, who I will forever be indebted to for recruiting me to Texas and helping bring the absolute best out of me,” Huff said in a statement, per USA Today.
Huff’s hall of fame selection classmates includes the likes of former Virginia Tech quarterback Michael Vick and 17 others.
Huff’s career at Texas lasted from 2002 to 2005. He became the seventh overall pick in the 2006 NFL Draft after Huff was selected by the Oakland Raiders, where he would invest seven seasons of his professional career before brief stints with the Baltimore Ravens and Denver Broncos in 2013. Huff would later opt to retire after his eighth NFL season.
As USA Today also notes, Huff was the first Texas player to win the Jim Thorpe Award.