Former Air Force great Chad Hennings is on the ballot for induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. Hennings is one of 77 players and seven coaches listed on the 2006 ballot by the National Football Foundation.

Hennings joins Randall Cunningham (University of Nevada at Las Vegas), Ahmad Rashad (University of Oregon), Bruce Smith (Virginia Tech) and Emmitt Smith (University of Florida) as players on the ballot for the first time.

A unanimous first-team All-American, Hennings won the Outland Trophy in 1987 as the nation’s top lineman. He led the nation with 24 sacks that season. He was the Western Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year in 1987 and was named to the WAC All-Decade Team for the 1980’s.

Hennings was also a two-time Academic All-American and was inducted into the Academic All-American Hall of Fame in 1998.

After graduation from the academy, he served four years in the Air Force and was an A-10 Thunderbolt II pilot during the Gulf War in 1991.

Hennings joined the Dallas Cowboys in 1992 and played nine years in the NFL, winning three Super Bowl rings with the Cowboys. He has been inducted into the Iowa High School Football Hall of Fame, the National High School Hall of Fame, the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame and the Colorado Springs Sports Hall of Fame.

Of the 4.4 million individuals who have played college football, only 796 have earned induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. The ballot was mailed to more than 12,000 NFF members whose votes will be tabulated and submitted to the NFF’s Honor Court.

The Hall of Fame Class will be announced at a press conference in New York City May 16. The class will be inducted at the National Football Foundation’s 49th Awards Dinner on Dec. 5 in New York City. They will be officially enshrined at the hall in South Bend, Ind., in the summer of 2007.

To be eligible for the ballot, players must have been named a first-team All-American by a major/national selector and utilized by the NCAA for their consensus All-America teams, played their last year of intercollegiate football at least 10 years prior, played within the last 50 years and be retired from professional football.