Falcons Create Cast of Honor

The Falcons announced today that they will create a Cast of Honor for Falcon players.  This is the result of a committee that was created to figure out how to honor players who had excelled.  Traditionally, a school might retire their number, but there seemed to be some reluctance to the idea when the Howard Komives issue came up a couple of years ago.  In some ways, I can see that.  For one thing, there are only so many numbers, and it means you aren't going to honor very many people.  Someone better comes along, and you run out of numbers.

So, the plan here is to honor the players.  Their jerseys will be hung in the venue where they play, but the numbers will remain in circulation.  BG's existing retired numbers (#29 in football, #42 in basketball and #9 and #19 in hockey) will remain.

The criteria are listed here, but I think they key one that will answer a lot of questions about who is in and who is that they should have received a national award, been an All-American and/or conference player of the year.

All the jerseys will be hung immediately, and players will be honored in person when they can make it to a game.

This kind of thing is just destined to start arguments.  I'm not going to bring up a bunch of guys who should or should not be honored in this way.  For now, let's just look at it for what it is.

Here are the players who are being honored.  For full bios, go to the release at bgsufalcons.com.


Three #3 jerseys in hockey will be honored as that number was worn by Ken Morrow, Rob Blake, and Garry Galley.

In men’s basketball, the jerseys of four former student-athletes will be honored in #7 Wyndol Gray, #30 Howard Komives, #33 Antonio Daniels, and #55 James Darrow.

In football, four jerseys will also be honored in #7 Erik White, #8 Cris Shale, #9 Dave Preston, and #31 Brian Leaver.

In women’s basketball, #43 Jackie Motycka will be honored and in volleyball, #1 Linda Popovich will be honored.

Technically, at least under the current rules, no one will ever wear #7 in men's basketball again.

Anyway, good job to the people who took this task on.  It wasn't easy and it could end up being pretty thankless, but it is a good effort as we continue to create a sense of history around our athletics program.