Another all-time-great Razorback, Dan Hampton lived up to his NFL draft billing and forged a Hall of Fame career
Being a great college football player is its own reward. Every time a college superstar returns home, he is beloved, honored, and doesn't have to buy a meal or a drink in town. Beyond that, however, college superstardom translates to top-tier NFL draft status. Dan Hampton had to bear the burden of being a top-five pick in the 1979 NFL draft, going at No. 4 to the Chicago Bears. The thrill of college is special and lasts a lifetime, but elite college athletes dread that one word: "bust." Dan Hampton had to make sure he didn't become one.
It's fair to say he didn't.
The other side of the coin for elite college football players is that if they make it big in the pros, they become all-timers -- not in one realm of football, but in the whole history of the sport. Much as Lance Alworth -- another Arkansas great -- reached the Hall of Fame in both college and pro football, Dan Hampton did the same. He's not a great college player or a great pro player; he's both. He's one of the best football players to come through Fayetteville.
Dan Hampton was part of Lou Holtz's 1977 team which crushed Oklahoma in the 1978 Orange Bowl and finished in the national top three. Hampton returned in 1978 and was the Southwest Conference Defensive Player of the Year. He parlayed that into his No. 4 selection at the top of the draft board in 1979. He promptly became a dominant defensive lineman with the Bears.
Dan Hampton benefited immensely from head coach Mike Ditka's leadership, and also from the expertise of Buddy Ryan, the Bears' defensive coordinator and one of the finest defensive tacticians in football history. Hampton became a four-time Second-Team All-Pro and Pro Bowler. He earned First-Team All-Pro in 1984 and was named to the NFL's 1980s All-Decade Team.
Hampton, having won an Orange Bowl, notched an even bigger achievement when he and the 1985 Bears won Super Bowl XX over the New England Patriots in January of 1986. It remains to this day the only Super Bowl the Bears have won. Chicago's only other appearance in the Supe was over two decades later in SB XLI against the Indianapolis Colts.
Dan Hampton won big at Arkansas, he won big in Chicago, and he dominated in both places. His college legacy, his Windy City legacy, and his Hall of Fame legacy flowed in and through football's biggest games and achievements in a career which -- combining Arkansas and the Bears -- lasted 16 full years, 1975-1990.
If there's a Mount Rushmore of Arkansas Razorback football legends, Dan Hampton has to be on it.