The College Football Hall of Fame is a place where legends are immortalized. It’s not enough to simply meet the stringent criteria to be placed on the ballot. Essentially, any nominee seeking to join the 0.02% of college football players enshrined must revolutionize either the game or a program.

By every measure, Timothy Flanders deserves to be honored alongside the icons in the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta.

Flanders enters his second year of eligibility for induction, as the selection process states that a player must wait 10 full seasons after their last year of college football. After all, the waiting period was the final hurdle to cross.

The former Sam Houston running back was a first-team All-American selection in 2011. He followed with second-team and third-team All-American honors in his junior and senior seasons (2012 and 2013). Flanders was twice named Southland Conference Player of the Year and is the only player in conference history to lead the league in rushing four consecutive years. Twice, he was a finalist for the Walter Payton Award, considered the FCS equivalent of the Heisman Trophy.

He’s the best player in Sam Houston football history, and arguably the greatest player in the history of the Southland. Flanders remains the all-time career leader in rushing and scoring in Bearkats and SLC history – and it’s not close.

Flanders finished his career with 5,664 rushing yards, still a whopping 970 yards ahead of second place on the SLC career rushing list. His 66 rushing touchdowns are 14 more than anyone in conference history, and Flanders' 70 total touchdowns outpace everyone by 16. 

While the numbers are legendary, Flanders' former head coach recalls a player who rarely played in the second half of many games. The Kats were 40-15 overall during Flanders' career with an average margin of victory of 27.3  points. Sam Houston’s 14 wins in 2011 are a mark the program may never surpass with the Kats' move to FBS in 2023.

Despite the limited playing time in many contests, Willie Fritz said Flanders is one of the players who deserves credit for turning Sam Houston’s football program into an FCS power.

“He took Sam Houston’s program to a different level and raised the expectations of the program to a level they maintain today. We weren’t drawing great crowds when I got there, but we had fantastic crowds in Tim’s senior year. You’d look in the stands and see hundreds of people wearing his jersey, and he didn’t get a penny from that,” Fritz said. “Still, he’d do whatever was asked, whether on the field or visiting an elementary school for an event.”

Fritz, now the head coach at Houston, still vividly remembers one play that he says summed up Flanders as a player. The Kats were hanging onto a three-point lead against Montana in the 2011 FCS semifinals, and faced a fourth-and-1 near midfield with around two minutes remaining in regulation. Fritz called a timeout to consider his options.

“This was before analytics, but we were at our 47-yard line, and we’d had a tough time stopping their offense in the second half. They were out of timeouts, and my OC asked me what I wanted to do,” Fritz recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t care. I just want Flanders to carry the ball. We ran an inside zone, and he bounced it outside for about 20 yards and stayed in bounds, so the clock kept running.”

Flanders' 22-yard rush capped off one of the greatest individual performances in Sam Houston history. The Midwest City, Oklahoma, native finished the game with 287 yards rushing and a touchdown on 26 attempts, leading the Bearkats to their first appearance in the FCS championship game. Flanders would lead the Kats back to the FCS title game in 2012.

Fritz is steadfast in his belief that Flanders deserves a spot among the immortals in Atlanta. He penned a “long” letter to the selection committee last year. He argued for Flanders' induction when he saw Steve Hatchell, President and CEO of the National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame, at the recent Big 12 meetings.

Flanders' career after college also lends credence to his inclusion in the Hall of Fame. He spent eight years in the NFL and CFL with stops in New Orleans, Cleveland, British Columbia, Winnipeg, Calgary, and Ottawa. He returned to Texas following his playing career and has spent the last three years serving as the running backs coach at Lake Travis High School. 

Sam Houston’s football program has been in existence for 112 years. Yet, it doesn’t have a representative in the College Football Hall of Fame. It’s time to immortalize the greatest Bearkat of all time and induct Tim Flanders.