Former University of Hawaii kicker Jason Elam on college football hall of fame ballot

Former All-America and All-Pro place-kicker Jason Elam could become the first University of Hawaii player in the National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame.

Elam, who played at UH between 1988 and ’92, was listed among the candidates for the 2021 class Tuesday. There are 78 players and seven coaches on the Football Bowl Subdivision ballot.

“It would be a huge honor just to be on the ballot and it is a credit to all the teammates and coaches I had at UH that helped put me in this position,” Elam said.

Bob Wagner, UH’s coach at the time (1987-95), said, “It would be very special for UH because it has been a long time (waiting). He’s just incredibly deserving. He could have been an All-American as a place-kicker and as a punter and is a real high character guy.”

Elam was a first-team All-America pick in the Rainbow Warriors 1992 Holiday Bowl championship season and earned second team honors in 1989 and ’91.

He converted on 79 of 100 career field-goal attempts, including a school-record 56-yarder against Brigham Young in 1992. At one point he made good on 91 consecutive extra-point attempts.

When he left UH for the NFL as a third-round pick of Denver in the 1993 draft, Elam was second in field goals (79) and third in scoring (395) in NCAA history.

He played 17 seasons in the NFL, 15 with the Denver Broncos and two with the Atlanta Falcons. He was inducted into the Broncos’ Ring of Honor.

In 2018, Elam received the NCAA’s Silver Anniversary Award. It honors six distinguished former student-athletes on the 25th anniversary of the end of their intercollegiate athletics eligibility.

The irony of the situation for the Rainbow Warriors is that the school’s lone official (partially, anyway) representative among more than 1,000 honorees in the Hall of Fame to date, Clark Shaughnessy, is in there despite what he did at UH.

In his one season (1965) as head coach at Manoa, Shaughnessy went 1-8-1. A 150-106-17 overall record compiled at his six previous stops — Tulane, Loyola (New Orleans), Chicago, Stanford, Maryland and Pittsburgh — is what won him inclusion in 1968.

Former Leilehua High star Al Harris (Arizona State) has been on the ballot for several years.

The late Paul Durham, who was a UH athletic director (1968-75) and an instructor in the UH College of Education, is on the coaches ballot for his 19 seasons as a head football coach at NAIA power Linfield (Ore.) College.

The only Hawaii native in the Hall of Fame is the late “Squirmin’ ” Herman Wedemeyer, a Saint Louis School graduate who starred for Saint Mary’s (1942 and 1945-47) and was elected in 1979.

Criteria for induction includes having received first-team All-America honors by an NCAA-recognized entity. Players become eligible for consideration 10 years after their final year of college participation.