10 college football players that scared the crap out of us

8. Ronnie Lott

Now, imagine, you’ve successfully culminated in an escape plan from the college football asylum that Bo Jackson haunted just a few slides ago. You’ve lost a few friends along the way to the likes of college football’s most terrifying, but you’ve found the door— and you plan to rush through it like a running back through a B gap.

And then, you see him.

Ronnie Lott, one of college football’s most terrifying downhill safeties is sprinting through the door at you with running back-like pace, closing up the hole like he did in his time at USC. You aren’t making it through the hole with him filling gaps as he did during his time with the Trojans.

Lott was a fantastic open-field tackler and had another great ability to plug holes (like, for instance, the one you needed to escape through) and decimating running backs.

He gained his reputation for being a hard-hitter at USC, where he earned the All-American nod in 1980 and sits in as one of the most terrifying opponents to see lining up on the other side of the field, or in our case, the way out.