Ndamukong Suh Gets His Due: He’s a College Football Hall-of-Famer

Bo Pelini’s best moment came early, and it led to an unforgettable year for Cornhusker football.

In the weeks following his first season as head coach, Pelini followed up a Gator Bowl victory over Clemson with the single most impactful accomplishment of his head coaching career. He persuaded Ndamukong Suh to postpone his NFL plans and return for his senior season in 2009 at the University of Nebraska.

One of the greatest individual college football seasons of all time might never have happened if not for a timely sales job by Pelini, someone not exactly known for his recruiting acumen. But then again, Pelini had a solid ally in Suh’s mother, Bernadette, an Oregon schoolteacher who wanted to see her son finish his degree in construction management.

Precisely where Suh’s rampage through the 2009 season ranks in the annals of college football could be debated forever. But absolutely no one associated with the sport will dispute that Suh deserves to be in the College Football Hall of Fame, where today he takes his rightful place along with the 17 other members of the newly unveiled Class of 2026.

It was Suh's first appearance on the ballot. With Wednesday's announcement, he becomes the 21st Husker to be named a collegiate HOF player. Formal induction will take place in early December.

A dominant defensive lineman can affect a game like no one else, and Suh wrecked the plans of many an offensive coordinator throughout his time in Lincoln. A more disruptive force may never appear on a football field again. Yet as he moved on to the NFL, and developed a “bad boy” persona in the likeness of Sam Huff, Ray Nitschke and Dick Butkus from generations gone by, Suh proved he could build and innovate as well as he could destroy. He carefully crafted his plans for life after football, forging a relationship with the “Oracle of Omaha,” investment wizard Warren Buffett, interning at Berkshire Hathaway, eventually building a wide-ranging investment portfolio and launching multiple business ventures.

Ndamukong Suh had a breakout performance on a rainy Thursday night at Missouri in October 2009, including this takedown that forced a fumble from quarterback Blaine Gabbert. Suh later picked off a Gabbert pass. | Nebraska Athletics

When I interviewed Suh in the spring before his senior year, he came across as a humble yet highly confident young man, exceptionally focused on the season ahead. As I prepared an article for a preseason publication, I figured Suh would be double-teamed on every snap (actually, he faced a surprising number of triple-teams). Because of that, I also assumed he would set up his fellow defensive linemen for excellent seasons (he certainly did; Pierre Allen, Barry Turner and a raw young kid from Cozad named Jared Crick all were beneficiaries). And I was pretty sure his own statistics would fall off somewhat as a result. Boy, was I wrong about that one.

Before that exquisite senior season — one that all these years later still scarcely seems believable — I wrote, “Suh is a rare and scary combination of the cerebral and the destructive.” Such a statement would have seemed unlikely just two years earlier.

After an underachieving sophomore season in 2007 in which Nebraska allowed 76 and 65 points in losses to Kansas and Colorado, he got some tutelage from Bo’s brother, Carl Pelini, and turned his career around. Suh helped rescue the Blackshirts from their Kevin Cosgrove-tarnished image with a massive bounceback as a junior, recording 76 tackles, 7½ sacks and 16 tackles for loss, so it was not exactly prophecy at that point. But then again, nobody could have predicted exactly how completely the 6-foot-4, 300-pounder would fulfill that statement as he thundered and pillaged his way through the autumn of 2009.

Suh vs Hawkins — Suh brushes aside his final pursuer, quarterback Cody Hawkins, as he returns an interception for a touchdown to cap the Huskers' 40-31 win over Colorado in 2008. | Bruce Thorson-Imagn Images

By then, nobody could handle Suh, a brutally effective run stuffer whose speed and agility allowed him to rush the passer with abandon and swat down passes at the line of scrimmage. Sometimes he grabbed them right out of the air. He had four interceptions over his college career, and returned two of them for touchdowns as a junior, including his iconic stomping of quarterback Cody Hawkins in a raucous comeback revenge win over Colorado, which may have unleashed the single loudest rendition of the unforgettable “S-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-h-h-h” cheer in Memorial Stadium history. He was one of the trendsetters who occasionally moved over to the offensive backfield to throw a key block at the goal line, and earlier in that junior season, he caught a touchdown pass in the flat after lining up as a fullback.

So when he entered his senior year, Suh already had a legitimate claim to Husker mythology, and he fed it relentlessly as the weeks went by. He did not dominate in the nonconference games, although he was always among the leading tacklers, but he stood larger than life when the conference season started Oct. 8 in Columbia, Missouri — again, by routinely making huge plays in big moments. He ended a promising Missouri drive in the first quarter by stalking Tiger quarterback Blaine Gabbert and sacking him with a savage sideways flip that forced a fumble. He set up Nebraska’s go-ahead score in the fourth quarter by reaching up to snatch Gabbert’s bullet pass out of the air. That Missouri game, played in a downpour of biblical proportions, seemed to unleash the inner beast of Suh, who played the rest of the season with near-demonic fury, as if he had been unleashed by the college football gods to smite hip and thigh all who dared to come against him.

Suh harassed Oklahoma quarterback Landry Jones in a signature 10-3 victory, which featured a 1-yard touchdown drive by the Huskers and was fortified by five interceptions against the 20th-ranked Sooners. It typified the type of defense the Huskers had to play that year to squeeze out victories with an offense that was downright inept at times and, even on many of its best days, was merely a minor supporting actor. In his final home game, Suh smashed Kansas State in a 17-3 win.

Suh blocks field goal — This blocked field goal by Suh (center rear) was just one of the ways he helped the 2009 Huskers stymie 20th-ranked Oklahoma, 10-3. | Nebraska Athletics

The numbers kept piling up. Despite facing double- and triple-teams throughout, Suh finished his year with 85 tackles, 52 of them unassisted. He had 12 sacks. He had 20½ tackles for loss. He was a unanimous All-American, and his list of postseason awards was astounding — the Outland, Lombardi, Bednarik and Nagurski, the AP College Football Player of the Year, the Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year.

Ironically, Suh’s finest game came in a defeat, the hotly debated 13-12 loss to Texas, the game where Pelini walked off the field celebrating a Big 12 title for about one minute before Longhorns coach Mack Brown prevailed on the officials to add one more second on the clock, which was just enough time for the Longhorns to kick a game-winning field goal.

In one of the bigger miscarriages of justice in college football history, Suh did not win the Heisman Trophy, although he may well have single-handedly denied it to Texas quarterback Colt McCoy, whom he sacked 4½ times in the Big 12 Championship. Implanted in the nation’s collective memory bank is the unforgettable image of a raging Suh tossing aside two Texas linemen and throwing McCoy like a rag doll. The Heisman went to Alabama running back Mark Ingram, a decision that has not aged well 16 years later.

Ndamukong Suh tackles Arizona running back Nic Grigsby — In his final game as a Husker, Suh helped Nebraska limit Arizona to 109 yards and six first downs in a 33-0 Holiday Bowl win. His 12 sacks on the season exceed the sack total of national champion Alabama's entire complement of defensive tackles. | Nebraska Athletics

After being denied the Heisman, Suh could have justifiably skipped the Huskers’ Holiday Bowl game against Arizona to prepare for the NFL Draft. Instead, he played, and was a major reason for Nebraska’s first-ever bowl shutout.

In the NFL, he signed with the Detroit Lions, who made him the No. 2 overall draft pick in 2010. He eventually also played for the Miami Dolphins, Los Angeles Rams and Tampa Bay Buccaneers where, in 2020 he secured a Super Bowl ring.

Suh played his last NFL game for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2022, although he waited until last July to officially announce his retirement. He stands a decent chance at someday being enshrined in the NFL Hall of Fame, as well.

However that ends up, his legend is secure in Nebraska, and his memory will long persist around the nation. In September 2024, when I did a pregame survey of 100 Husker fans to ask who they thought was Nebraska’s best football player over the past quarter-century, the standard answer I got was, “You mean, besides Suh?” When he’s invited back to Memorial Stadium this fall to commemorate his election into the College Football Hall of Fame, the response will be overwhelming, which is appropriate when myth and reality collide in a way that makes them both last forever.