MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Many wondered back in July if 2023 would finally be the year that Chuck Howley would be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The WVU Sports Hall of Famer certainly had the credentials to gain entry into Canton, but had been kept on the outside of the National Football League’s hall of fame museum for many years.

As it turns out, 2023 will be the year. Howley will finally be enshrined as an NFL Hall of Famer in August.

Howley, the Wheeling, West Virginia native, is one of nine former players and coaches that will make up the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Class of 2023. They will be officially enshrined in Canton, Ohio, on August 5.

Howley is one of the top players in WVU football history. However, he made NFL history with the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl V, when he became the first and only player on the losing team to be named Super Bowl MVP. Howley eventually earned his Super Bowl ring a year later. He was also part of one of the most famous games in NFL history, the storied “Ice Bowl” of the 1967 postseason.

Howley did the unthinkable by lettering in five sports – football, track & field, wrestling, gymnastics, and swimming – as a collegiate athlete at WVU.

At the professional level, Howley earned five first-team All-Pro selections, and was a six-time Pro Bowler. He was selected with the No. 7 overall pick of the 1958 NFL Draft by the Chicago Bears, but played in just 15 games over two seasons for the team that drafted him.

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The knee injury that forced him to sit out the entire 1960 season, and had him contemplating retirement, changed the course of his career. He was traded to the upstart Dallas Cowboys, coached by Tom Landry, and the rest, as they say, is history.

When Howley joins the “Greatest of the Game” in Canton this summer, it will be the latest Hall of Fame type honor of his career. He is already a member of the WVU Sports Hall of Fame, the Mountaineer Legends Society, the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, the Ohio Valley Atheltic Conference Hall of Fame, and the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor.

Howley was selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame by way of the Seniors Committee. He will celebrate his 87th birthday just over one month before being enshrined in Canton.