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John Henderson’s excellence on the Tennessee defensive front a generation ago has earned him a place in the 2025 College Football Hall of Fame class.
Henderson stands 6-foot-7 and weighed in excess of 330 pounds when he played. He was a beast of a player in the trenches at Tennessee from 1998-2001 for Phillip Fulmer’s teams. Technically, Henderson was on the 1998 team that won the national championship, but he didn’t get his first action in orange until the 1999 season, when he had 40 tackles, 4 tackles-for-loss and 4 sacks.
Henderson started to make his mark in Knoxville in 2000. He had a whopping 71 tackles, 12 tackles-for-loss and 10 sacks, and Henderson captured the Outland Trophy as the nation’s best lineman. Henderson helped the Volunteers’ defense hold opponents to 817 yards rushing that year.
Henderson dealt with an ankle injury in 2001, but he was still a finalist for the Outland Trophy and a semifinalist for the Lombardi Trophy. Despite the injury, Henderson still had 54 tackles, 5 tackles-for-loss and 5.5 sacks, and he earned All-American honors for the second straight season.
Henderson played in the NFL for a decade with the Jacksonville Jaguars and Oakland Raiders, and he was a 2-time Pro Bowler (2004, 2006).
But he’ll be honored later this year for his excellence in Knoxville. Tennessee football social media kept it simple and tweeted one word on Wednesday when announcing Henderson’s induction: “Dominant.”
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
