Ryan Yarborough 2025 NFF COLLEGE FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME CLASS

ryan yarborough

By Matt Fortuna

Ryan Yarborough's football life is akin to one big game of six degrees of separation. His father, Darwin, played wide receiver at Morgan State. He was roommates with future Super Bowl champion Mark Washington and legendary sportswriter William C. Rhoden. Yarborough's uncle, Bill, was an all-state quarterback in Chicago who was ahead of his time directing the run-and-shoot offense, before being moved to defensive back at Wisconsin.

"Those were my pioneers," Yarborough said of his dad and uncle. "Those were people that made the path for me."

Yarborough took advantage of that path, and the wide receiver has become just the third Wyoming player to make the College Football Hall of Fame, an honor that simply can't be measured by its uniqueness, as less than 0.02 percent of players in the history of college football have made the Hall.

"It's way less than 1 percent, because my son and I did the actual math, because I was always into statistics and things of that nature," Yarborough said. "But I didn't let them define me, because when it comes down to it, you can overcome any odds when it's all said and done, so I never was into the numbers (against me).

"But as far as just being in the same category with guys I grew up watching, like my favorites, like Tony Dorsett when I was growing up, inducted into the Hall of Fame with guys like Deion Sanders, you know what I mean? It's a gratifying feeling, to say the least."

Growing up as the oldest of seven kids on the South Side of Chicago, Yarborough had been looking to get as far away from the Windy City as possible. Wyoming had developed a pipeline of Second City players under head coach and athletic director Paul Roach, who had actually served as Bill Yarborough's position coach back at Wisconsin. Joe Tiller succeeded Roach at Wyoming after Yarborough's freshman season.

Yarborough was impossible for defenses to contain, leading the nation in receiving yards in 1992 and '93, accumulating 1,351 yards in '92 and 1,512 yards in '93. He set an NCAA record at the time for career receiving yards (4,357) and he still holds the NCAA record for yards per reception - minimum of 200 catches - at 19.0 yards per catch. His 42 career touchdown receptions still rank eighth all-time, and his average of 137.5 receiving yards per game in 1993 still ranks him among the top 30 in history. He had seven 200-yard receiving games and made a touchdown catch in 27 straight games. He posted three 1,000-yard seasons and had 229 career receptions.

The Cowboys made the Copper Bowl twice during Yarborough's career. They won a share of the Western Athletic Conference title in Yarborough's senior season of 1993, knocking off a Marshall Faulk-led San Diego State team on the road in the title-clinching game. That game, along with a game-winning touchdown catch to beat the Aztecs in a 52-51 thriller in 1990, rank as Yarborough's top college memories. San Diego State's quarterback was Dan McGwire, the younger brother of record-setting MLB slugger Mark McGwire.

"I just wanted to be better than my dad and my uncle and go to the next level," Yarborough said of his inspirations. He made it there when the Jets drafted him in the second round in 1994. He played six seasons with four NFL franchises before retiring to the Houston area. The history of his family, and the history he made at Wyoming, is not lost on him.

"Just being able to go there and accomplish the things I did, it's a blessing, first and foremost," Yarborough said. "And I'm forever grateful for not only being the third Wyoming Hall of Famer, but the first Black, Brown skin Hall of Famer at Wyoming, because there were a lot of obstacles I had to overcome. I wanted to get far away from home, but I didn't necessarily know where I was going. When I got there, I had to be reminded that I wasn't back in the Chicagoland area. So just being able to overcome some things, that perseverance that the kids don't necessarily have today, being able to move around so frequently, helped me grow as a man."