Former UK star Randall Cobb among six to be inducted in Kentucky Pro Football Hall of Fame
Randall Cobb, a fan favorite for several years at the University of Kentucky, is among the 2022 inductees to the Kentucky Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Cobb, who has played 11 seasons in the NFL, nine of them with the Green Bay Packers, will be inducted along with five other members of the class on June 23 during a ceremony in downtown Lexington. Joining him are: George Wilson, a Paducah native who played nine seasons in the league as an undrafted free agent; Reggie Swinton, a former Murray State standout whose eight-year pro career featured multiple minor-league stops on the way to the NFL; Lee Calland, an undrafted player out of Louisville who in 1963 became the first rookie in league history to start a game at cornerback; Steve Ortmayer, whose lengthy career included coaching and executive stints for the Oakland Raiders, with whom he won two Super Bowls; and Elbie Nickel, a tight end out of Lewis County who was among the 33 players named to the Pittsburgh Steelers’ All-Time Team in 2007.
Dermontti Dawson was named this year’s recipient of the Blanton Collier Award for integrity. The former UK standout was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, in 2012, and was a member of the inaugural Kentucky Pro Football Hall of Fame class in 2003.
Nickel and Ortmayer will be inducted posthumously. Ortmayer, who died last March, was UK’s special teams coordinator during all three of Cobb’s seasons at the school.
“He was one of the first people to see the ability in me and to give me the confidence that I could play on the next level,” Cobb said during a virtual ceremony announcing the inductees. “And he placed me in positions that gave me an opportunity to showcase my talents and show what I could do. I think just being able to enter into this Hall of Fame with him makes it that much more special.”
Wilson has a memorable connection to Kentucky. He initially went to Arkansas as a walk-on but started his final three seasons with the Razorbacks, for whom he caught nine receptions for a career-high 172 yards and a touchdown in their 71-63 overtime win at UK in 2003. UK never extended a scholarship to Wilson.
“It’s definitely a highlight of my career, knowing that I was able to come back and and have the last say,” said Wilson.
George’s older brother, Kiyo, played on scholarship at UK from 1993-1996. Joker Phillips recruited Kiyo and told George, then in the sixth grade, that he’d be coming for him next. Unfortunately, by the time George was eligible to be recruited, Joker was coaching at Minnesota. He credited the former Kentucky head coach for fueling his fire at a young age.
“I repeated those words back to myself every day when I was going to school, when I was going to practice,” George said. “I said, ‘I don’t know if he’s coming back to get me like he said he was, but if he does, I’m gonna be ready and I’m gonna give him a reason to come looking for me.’”
Swinton, a native of Little Rock, Ark., grew up dreaming to play for the Razorbacks but couldn’t make a high-enough ACT score to qualify academically for his home-state school or any other major program. He ended up playing for Houston Nutt at Murray State and became the first receiver in school history to amass 1,000 receiving yards.
“I always say that it was Murray State or McDonald’s,” Swinton said. “I had nowhere else to go but Murray. I certainly thank them, because it was either come up there to Kentucky to a place I had never heard about, or finding me a job. I knew I had too much talent to not go play football.”
The Jacksonville Jaguars signed him as an undrafted free agent but quickly cut him, leading to stints with three different Canadian Football League teams in a single season (1999). In 2001 he played with an XFL team (Las Vegas Outlaws) and a Champions Indoor Football squad (Arkansas Twisters) before landing with the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. He played parts of three seasons in Dallas before bouncing around his last couple of years.
Swinton called this induction “the biggest honor I’ve received in my life.” The members of his class are the first to whom purple jackets with a Hall of Fame emblem will be issued ahead of their induction. Previous inductees will also be given jackets in June.
“I can already tell you right now that I’m gonna cry,” Swinton said. “I’m gonna cry, so get ready for tears when y’all see me.”
While Cobb, Swinton and Wilson are close to being contemporaries, Calland’s playing days were over before the oldest of those three (Swinton, 46) was born. He made league history with the Minnesota Vikings and finished a 10-year playing career with the Pittsburgh Steelers with 19 interceptions to his name. The Louisville graduate went on to a lengthy coaching career, spending time with the World League of American Football’s London Monarchs, Morehouse College, Southern University, Morris Brown College and Tennessee State University.
“When you coach, you get a chance to teach, and that’s what my major was when I was at the University of Louisville,” said Calland. “I got a chance to actually use the teaching fundamentals in coaching, and the kids that I was able to share that with got a real good start in life.”
