April 7, 2008
ORLANDO, Fla. (www.ucfathletics.com) - On Friday evening, nine individuals will be inducted into the UCF Athletics Hall of Fame at a ceremony in the J. Rolfe Davis Recruiting Room at Bright House Networks Stadium. The event is part of UCF's inaugural hall of fame weekend, which also features the football spring game on Saturday at the stadium.
The hall of fame dinner begins at 6 p.m. on Friday. To purchase tickets for the event, contact Misty Knight in the Golden Knights Club at 407-882-1289 or mknight@athletics.ucf.edu.
One of five former letterwinners who will join the hall of fame, Darrell Rudd was a standout defensive lineman for the Knights from 1984-87. Rudd owns the school record for sacks in a season (19.5 in 1984) and career (31.5).
Rudd is currently a firefighter in Seminole County, where he also coaches a Pop Warner football team. He recently spoke with the UCF athletics communications staff about his induction in the hall of fame.
Describe your emotions on being inducted into the UCF Athletics Hall of Fame.
"It is very humbling. It is a great honor. It is one of those things that when I first started out at UCF, I had no clue [that this would occur]. It is a hard question to answer. It is something that hopefully when you get older and look back at it, your kids can look back at it and your grandkids. It still has not really sunk in for me. I am excited and my wife is very excited."
What was the top memory that you have from your time playing football at UCF?
"I have two young boys and I always try to motivate them. The story I always tell them is when we were playing Western Kentucky (in 1984). I am from Ohio, so I had about 45 to 50 of my relatives coming to the game. It was the first college game where they would be able to see me play. That is when we had Lou Saban as the coach. We had just lost to Georgia Southern the week before. I came in on Monday morning [after the game] and all of the equipment had been taken out of my locker. I thought somebody was playing a joke on me. I went to see the equipment manager (Stitch Flanagan). He said that coach Saban said that you are playing for yourself and you are not a team player. We had a lot of young guys on the team and I guess he needed someone to motivate. He put me on the scout team for the rest of the week. I made the trip and went to the game. The first quarter starts and we went down pretty quickly, I think 13-0. The defense was out on the field and they were still moving the ball on us. [Saban] looks down the sideline at me and says, `Do you want to play Darrell?' I said, `Yes, sir.' I go in and it was probably one of my better games ever. I had 5.5 sacks and probably had about 14 tackles. We came back and won. We went for two and won the game."