By Con MarshallÂ
Two Chadron State football teams that were ranked in the top 10 nationally and were the college’s first to qualify for the playoffs will be inducted into the Eagles’ Athletic Hall of Fame during the first home football game this fall on Saturday, Sept. 9. Kickoff will be a noon.
They are the 1989 and 1990 teams, both coached by Brad Smith. They finished with 8-1 and 9-1 regular-season records, respectively, and will be the only football teams inducted into the CSC Hall of Fame since 1998, when the 1948, 1958 and 1978 teams received that honor.
Following a luncheon, the players will be introduced and be presented Hall of Fame certificates at halftime of the Eagles’ game against the Augustana Vikings from Sioux Falls, S.D.
Since there were just six seniors on the 1989 football team, a majority of the players were the same on the two teams that will be inducted this fall.
Both teams had potent offenses. The 1989 team averaged 439.5 yards a game and the 1990 team led NCAA II with a 480-yard average. Tailback David Jones rushed for 1,458 yards the first year and led both the NAIA and NCAA II in rushing with 1,570 yards in 10 games in 1990.
Both Jones and linebacker Corey Anderson, who came up with a remarkable 17 turnovers during his career, were consensus All-Americans as seniors in ’90. Placekicker Jay Masek and offensive lineman Bill Boness were second-team All-Americans that season.
The two teams going into the Hall of Fame this fall launched Brad Smith’s exceptional 18-year tenure as the Eagles’ head football coach. He compiled a 136-57-1 career record at CSC and his teams won or shared five Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference championships.
When Smith stepped down as the football coach to become Chadron State’s full-time athletic director at the end of the 2004 season, his 70.4 winning percentage ranked seventh in NCAA Division II among coaches whose teams had played at least 150 games.
Smith’s teams ranked among the nation’s top 25 in final polls eight times, twice in NAIA and six times in NCAA II.
When the RMAC celebrated its centennial in 2009, Smith was selected the conference’s Football Coach of the Century. He was inducted into the Chadron State Athletic Hall of Fame in 2010 and the RMAC Hall of Fame in 2011. He also was inducted into the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame in 2019.
I was a kid back then remember going to all those games. Man, those were fun times. I knew they scored lots of points, but I never realized the 1990 led D2 offensive yards and had the nations leading rusher. I wish the team could bring some of that glory back, but I know things are different in this newer generation.