Dent finally gets his Hall of Fame moment

CHICAGO (AP) - Richard Dent had just joined the Chicago Bears, and Dan Hampton was a little less than impressed.

He saw a player who was scrawny - even a bit lazy - and when Buddy Ryan asked about two weeks into practices what he thought of the rookie, well, the "Danimal" couldn't be restrained, using a few choice words to describe him.

"I said, 'Why, you like him?"' Hampton recalled. "And Buddy said, 'Watch him. He never makes a bad decision, and that's the essence of being a defensive lineman."'

What a defensive end he turned out to be. And now, after some near misses, Dent's long wait for a spot in the Hall of Fame is just about over.

Dent will finally become the third member of that legendary 1985 Chicago Bears defense to be inducted into the Hall on Saturday, when he joins fellow "Monsters of the Midway" Hampton and Mike Singletary. It's an honor that his teammates and coaches say is long overdue.

Who can forget the mangled mess of opponents that group left behind while shuffling all the way to a championship? Whether it was the crunching hits or Dent bursting past the tackle and stripping the ball as he sacked the quarterback, few teams made offenses wilt the way that one did.

He will go in as part of a class that includes Shannon Sharpe, Marshall Faulk, Chris Hanburger, Les Richter, Ed Sabol and Deion Sanders. He'll be presented by Joe Gilliam Sr., his old coach at Tennessee State, who, like Hampton, was far from impressed - at first.

"I didn't worry about the day coming," Dent said. "I more or less worried about the people who I wanted to thank, make sure they were living. I lost my high school coach who just died a couple years ago. My mother passed in '89, and I think the last guy living here that played a big part of it was Coach Gilliam."

A four-time Pro Bowl pick and MVP of the Super Bowl during the 1985 championship season, Dent played 15 years and is tied for sixth with John Randle on the NFL's all-time sacks list with 137 1/2. He set a team record with 17 1/2 in 1984, led the NFL with 17 sacks a year later and finished with 10 or more eight times in his career.

Now, after missing out as a finalist six of the previous seven years, he's finally going into the Hall. Not bad for a guy who barely made his college team, who then watched as 202 players got drafted before him in 1983 and who showed up to the Bears undersized and needing extensive dental work.

"The thing about Richard was he really made himself what he became," said Mike Ditka, the '85 Bears' coach.

He's the first Hall of Famer from Tennessee State, a historically black school that produced Pro Bowl picks such as Ed "Too Tall" Jones and Claude Humphrey. And yet, Gilliam wanted nothing to do with Dent.

He just couldn't avoid him, though. And on Saturday, he'll be the one making the presentation.

The defensive coordinator at Tennessee State, Gilliam happened to be teaching a graduate course in public health and one of his students was William Lester, Dent's coach at Murphy High in Atlanta. Gilliam was also responsible for recruiting in Georgia, and one spring day, he stopped by the school. Lester put in a tape and asked what he thought.

"I said, 'I have cornerbacks that are bigger than Richard Dent and he's an offensive tackle. He just won't cut it, coach,"' Gilliam said.

Lester wouldn't take no for an answer, though, and when fall practices started, Gilliam said he showed up with Dent in tow even though there was no scholarship offer.

"He says, 'We can't leave him in Atlanta. He won't make it, coach.' I said, 'I can understand, he comes from a pretty rough area and all that, but I just don't have a scholarship for him.' He says, 'Coach, I can't leave him. So I brought him.' He says, 'You do what you can for him. I know you'll do that."'

He remembers Lester telling him, "Well, you got him" and then leaving. Dent remembers thinking he was going to summer school when he and his three high school teammates went to Tennessee State. He wasn't sure he'd be on the team.

Either way, he said he spent his redshirt year on offense eyeing a switch to defense because he thought he had a better shot at playing time there. He studied what the defensive players were doing, practiced techniques in his dorm room.

When he made the switch, he immediately started making life miserable for opposing linemen and quarterbacks.

He was relentless, like "a guided missile" going after the ball carrier.

"We didn't teach him that," said Gilliam, who eventually moved over to offensive coordinator while Dent was there. "Buddy Ryan didn't teach him that with the Chicago Bears, either. ... If you knocked him down, he'd get up before you and he'd make the tackle. I don't care who it was or where it was, he'd run until the whistle blew."

He also seemed impervious to pain.

Gilliam remembers Dent suffering a small fracture in his left forearm in a game, practicing on Thursday and then getting four sacks in the next game, even though he was essentially playing with one arm.

As tough and as quick as he was, Dent was easy to overlook because he didn't really stand out as a physical specimen. Even though he put on weight in college, he still only tipped the scales in the upper 220s when he started with the Bears and needed extensive dental work.

The thinking was the problems with his teeth were preventing him from eating properly and gaining weight. Dent had another theory - that he practiced so hard in college that he simply could not pack on the pounds.

The Bears took care of the dental problems, and whether it was because of that or the different routine, he gained weight and wound up at about 265.

That issue aside, Ryan, the coordinator of that 46 defense, said Dent simply "had all the natural ability in the world." And he certainly stood out on a unit packed with stars.

With Hampton, Singletary, Steve McMichael, Otis Wilson, Wilber Marshall, Dave Duerson and Gary Fencik, the Bears were loaded, but Dent did not get lost in the shuffle. "The Sackman" was at his best in the playoffs, starting with that divisional game against the New York Giants in which he had 3 1/2 sacks. He kept it going in the NFC championship, sacking Dieter Brock and forcing a fumble that Marshall ran back 52 yards for a touchdown as snow started to fall at Soldier Field, capping a 24-0 romp over the Los Angeles Rams. And in the Super Bowl, all Dent did was have a hand in two sacks, force two fumbles and block a pass while taking the MVP as the Bears stomped New England, 46-10.

As dominant as they were, though, they never won another championship, and there was a perception that Dent's numbers were bloated because of whom he played alongside.

"Oh no, he was good," McMichael said. "He was good. ... On any team that's ever been, he'd make the same plays."

Wilson said, "He would have done what he did on any defense, on any team."

Now, finally, he's set to take his place among the game's greats.

"You become a rookie again here," he said. "It's somewhere you haven't been, you don't know anything about. You try to control your emotions, but then again, you try to express yourself, too. I don't know until I step on the floor and step up to the mic, but I'm going to be who I am and kind of just speak from the heart of things, not getting too tied up into the speech and more or less getting tied up into the people who helped you."