Wilber Marshall - College Career

College Career

Marshall received an athletic scholarship to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, where he was a star linebacker for coach Charley Pell's Florida Gators football team from 1980 to 1983. He was the core of a ferocious Gators defense and finished his college career with 343 tackles, fifty-eight tackles for a loss, and twenty-three quarterback sacks. Marshall was a three-time first-team All-Southeastern Conference (SEC) selection (1981, 1982, 1983) and a two-time consensus first-team All-American (1982, 1983). He was a finalist for the Lombardi Award in both 1982 and 1983, and was named "National Defensive Player of the Year" by ABC Sports in 1983. The Gainesville Sun named him a first-team selection to the Gators "Team of the Century" in 1999, as well as the "Defensive Player of the Century." Marshall was inducted into the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame as a "Gator Great," and was named to the University of Florida's Ring of Honor in 2007, joining Florida football greats Steve Spurrier, Jack Youngblood, Emmitt Smith and Danny Wuerffel. Marshall was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2008.