15 best college football players we wish played in the Twitter era

8. Best college football players before Twitter: Derrick Thomas, DE/OLB, Alabama

One of the best things about Twitter is that it serves as an instant curation of historical moments. We can see and react to celebrities’ react to winning an award. We can share in the agony of players who lose during the NCAA Tournament. And we can collectively realize when something absolutely special is happening. Derrick Thomas’s 27-sack season at Alabama was one of those magical moments.

Sure, the sack as a statistic might be a little overrated (pressures matter too!), but that doesn’t mean we don’t count it and we don’t recognize that it is important. Imagine getting to count along throughout the season. You can just imagine the content aggregators stealing tweets with jokes about how Thomas can’t be stopped.

He holds the unofficial career sack mark because the NCAA didn’t track stats until 2000 with 52 sacks, tied with Tedy Bruschi. But nothing would have lit the internet up like his 27 sack senior year. Take a look at some of the clippings from 1988.

Recapping the Game 6 victory over Penn State, the eminent Brent Musburger said Thomas had “the most dominating performance I’ve ever seen by a college player.” That same week, he was defensive player of the week, thanks to eight tackles, three sacks (one for a safety) and a pass deflected. Translation: Twitter explodes.

We went absolutely nuts for Joe Burrow in 2019. While there will never be a defensive season as impressive or as important as what Burrow did this year, setting the sack record is something we can all get excited about. The explosion of congratulations and highlight mixtapes would have been enormous.