Iowa State's Troy Davis selected for induction into College Hall of Fame

AMES — If Troy Davis heard the question once, it was like he heard it a million times. To be fair, people couldn't believe how someone with his level of achievement in college football was still awaiting national recognition and had to ask for his opinion.

''You're a two-time 2,000-yard back,'' Davis would hear. 'How can you not get inducted into the Hall of Fame?''

Now when Davis is seen in public, those questions will likely turn into enthusiastic congratulations for reaching the highest honor in college football.

Davis was selected for induction into the College Football Hall of Fame on Friday in his third year on the ballot. He is part of a 16-person class — with 14 players and two coaches — that will be inducted in 2016 out of 76 names on the ballot.

The Miami, Fla. native is the only player in FBS history to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a season twice. The short and stocky running back had 2,010 yards as a sophomore in 1995 and 2,185 yards in 1996 and is the first player in Cyclones history to be invited to the Heisman Trophy ceremony twice.

Davis finished second in the Heisman voting in 1996 to Florida's Danny Weurffel, but said when he got word that he was finally being inducted into the Hall of Fame, he had to set the phone down in disbelief.

'Getting inducted into the Hall of Fame, makes the Heisman seem like it's just anything,' Davis said. 'This is what I played football for is to get into the Hall of Fame one day. It came true. The Heisman, hey I was up for it twice, and came up short. But the Hall of Fame, I got it.'

For as good as Davis turned out to be when he left Ames early to enter the NFL Draft — getting drafted by the New Orleans Saints — former Iowa State coach Dan McCarney had no way of knowing what kind of player Davis would become when he arrived in 1995.

Davis played sparingly as a freshman for Jim Walden in 1994, finishing the year with just 187 rushing yards. When McCarney met with Davis after he took the job, Davis told his coach that he thought about transferring. What McCarney asked of his future star running back was a chance.

McCarney wrote a letter of recommendation for Davis' Hall of Fame induction and said the message that the letter contained came straight from the heart. In 45 years as a player and coach in college football, McCarney said what Davis did as a player was something that gave anybody who saw it perspective on the game.

'Little did we know (in the spring of 1995) he was going to be a two-time Heisman finalist and do something that had never been done before in the history of college football,' McCarney said. 'As you guys know, this is 2016. (Davis') last year at Iowa State was in 1996. Another 20 years have passed and still no one has ever done what he did.'

Davis currently lives in his hometown of Miami and has three sons and a daughter. He was a football coach at a local prep school until as recently as the last five years and said he's 'having a good time with the family right now.' Davis knows how prestigious of an individual award the Hall of Fame is, but like any great running back, he deflected some of the credit.

'If it wasn't for Coach Dan McCarney, you never know where I'd be at right now,' Davis said. 'Dan McCarney stuck with me and told me what he was going to do and that's why I'm here and that's why I'm a Hall of Famer now.'