3/26/2010 12:37:00 PM Goldberg headlines 2010 Jewish sports hall of fame class
Former professional wrestler and football player Bill Goldberg has been inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in New York. (PHOTO/courtesy of University of Georgia sports communications).
Bill Goldberg is, as he’s one of seven athletes who will be inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
Goldberg became famous as a professional wrestler with both World Championship Wrestling and World Wrestling Entertainment (which later absorbed WCW). With WCW, Goldberg coined the phrase “Who’s next?” during a span of 173 consecutive victories that made sports-entertainment history.
However, with professional wrestling’s staged outcomes, there was some debate when it came to placing him in the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
But what ultimately got him in, said Alan Freedman, the director of the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, was that Goldberg possessed a solid resume as an accomplished football player, making the all-SEC team twice and becoming a second team All-American in 1989.
“There’s a lot of entertainment in [professional wrestling] but there was a part of the committee that said, ‘Listen, he was all-SEC, he was an All-American as a football player,” Freedman said. “And those credentials outweighed the doubts, however you want to say, about professional wrestling.”
At the University of Georgia, Goldberg tallied 348 tackles – placing him ninth on the career tackle list as a Bulldog. He also had 12 career sacks, the 15th highest in school history.
After graduating from Georgia in 1989, Goldberg was drafted by the Los Angeles Rams in 1990, followed by a stint with the Sacramento Surge in the now-defunct World League of American Football. In 1992, Goldberg played with the Atlanta Falcons for three years, before joining the Carolina Panthers in 1995.
An abdomen injury ended his professional football career, and Goldberg’s official Web site states that he was the first player cut from the Panthers’ franchise.
With his induction, Goldberg becomes the first professional wrestler to make it into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame – but he was not the first considered, as former University of Minnesota football player turned professional wrestler Butch Levy was up for induction first (Levy never received the nod).
Among those to be inducted with Goldberg are Olympic swimmer Jason Lezak, Virginia Tech basketball coach Seth Greenberg and former NFL offensive lineman Alan Veingrad. Volleyball coach Russ Rose, Achilles Track Club founder Dick Traum and judo icon Rusty Kanokogi also will be inducted.
The athletes will be honored on Sunday, April 18 in Commack, N.Y. All athletes except Kanokogi, who passed away in November, will be present for the ceremony.
“We’re impressed because you have the old jokes, like in the movie ‘Airplane,’ where the guy says, ‘I want some light reading material’ and they give him a pamphlet about famous Jewish Athletes,” Freedman said. “This is our 18th year doing this and we’re impressed at the fact that there are so many men and women that have done amazing things. And it’s not just the well-known people like there are in this class.”
During his professional wrestling career, Goldberg won the WCW United States title, the WCW World Heavyweight title and the WWE World Heavyweight title. After his professional wrestling career ended, he appeared in movies such as Ready to Rumble and the 2005 remake of The Longest Yard. Goldberg is currently on “The Celebrity Apprentice,” hosted by business tycoon Donald Trump.
“I don’t know how he’s doing on ‘The Apprentice,’ but do you think I’d tell him he’s fired? Yeah, right. He might rip [Trump’s] hair off,” Freedman joked.
