Foley, Wuerffel to be Inducted into the Allstate Sugar Bowl Hall of Fame
Foley and Wuerffel join fellow Gator Steve Spurrier, who was inducted to the Sugar Bowl Hall of Fame in 2018.
NEW ORLEANS – Legendary Gators Jeremy Foley and Danny Wuerffel will be inducted into the Sugar Bowl Hall of Fame<https://allstatesugarbowl.org/feature/halloffame>, as part of its sixth class, in conjunction with the 90th annual Allstate Sugar Bowl on January 1, 2024, the Sugar Bowl announced Wednesday.
Foley is the first Sugar Bowl Hall of Fame inductee to have served solely as an administrator. He was Florida’s athletic director from 1992-2016, a stretch of unparalleled success for the Gators that included six Sugar Bowl appearances. Florida’s first Sugar Bowl appearance under Foley’s leadership came in the 1994 game as the Gators rolled to a 41-7 victory over West Virginia. After a loss to archrival Florida State in the 1995 Sugar Bowl, Foley and the Gators gained revenge in the 1997 Sugar Bowl as they defeated the Seminoles, 52-20, a victory that secured the first football national title in Florida history.
Foley directed Gator teams to 27 national championships, including football (3), men’s basketball (2), women’s soccer, and softball. Foley is the only athletic director in Division I history to have overseen a program that has won multiple titles in both football (1996,2006,2008) and basketball (2006 and 2007). Florida ranked among the top five athletic programs in the country for 18 of Foley’s 24 years.
Wuerffel earned essentially every honor that a college football player could collect during his legendary career at Florida. An under-the-radar accomplishment for the star quarterback from Fort Walton Beach, Fla., is that he threw for more yards than any quarterback in Sugar Bowl history with 700. He had 306 yards and three touchdowns and earned the Miller-Digby Award as the Sugar Bowl MVP when the Gators rolled to a 52-20 win over Florida State to clinch the national championship in the 1997 game.
Prior to that, he had thrown for 394 yards (then a Sugar Bowl single-game record) and a TD in the Gators’ 1995 loss to FSU. A two-time First-Team All-American, Wuerffel claimed the 1996 Heisman Trophy, the Walter Camp Player of the Year Award, and the Maxwell Award.
The two-time SEC Player of the Year posted a 45-6-1 career mark as a Gator, finishing his career with nearly 11,000 passing yards and 33 school records, taking Florida to bowl games in each of his four seasons. He also earned the William V. Campbell Trophy, the National Football Foundation’s top honor which is recognized as the Academic Heisman.
Foley and Wuerffel are joined by Alabama’s Lee Roy Jordan and Notre Dame’s Ara Parseghian in the 2024 class of the Allstate Sugar Bowl Hall of Fame. They join fellow Gator Steve Spurrier, who was inducted to the Sugar Bowl Hall of Fame in 2018.
