Cafego to enter West Virginia Hall of Fame

Longtime Tennessee football legend George Cafego was one of six individuals named over the weekend to the 2009 class of the West Virginia Coaches Association North-South Hall of Fame.

All six native West Virginians played in the state's North-South All-Star Game and went on to gain football distinction at higher levels.

The six, George Cafego, William Russell Craft, Alex Hawkins, Leon McCoy, Bobby Moss and Floyd (Ben) Schwartzwalder, will be inducted June 20 at the North-South Game at Charleston's Laidley Field.

Not long after George Cafego's death in 1998, sportscaster Keith Jackson offered a tribute on national television. "Nobody's name rests higher in Tennessee football than George Cafego,'' Jackson said.

Cafego, a Scarbro, W.Va., native and Oak Hill High School graduate, played in the 1936 North-South Game and began his college career at Georgia. But after one year, he transferred to Tennessee, where he twice earned All-America and All-Southeastern Conference honors as a 5-foot-10, 169-pound quarterback. He also punted and returned kicks.

Cafego died in 1998 at the age of 82.