Mike Hegman

Mike Hegman

Hegman (58) playing for the Cowboys in 1986
No. 58
Position:	Linebacker
Personal information
Date of birth:	(1953-01-17) January 17, 1953 (age 64)
Place of birth:	Memphis, Tennessee
Height:	6 ft 1 in (1.85 m)
Weight:	227 lb (103 kg)
Career information
High school:	Memphis (TN) Northside
College:	Tennessee State
NFL Draft:	1975 / Round: 7 / Pick: 173
Career history
Dallas Cowboys (1976−1988)
Career highlights and awards
Super Bowl champion (XII)
Career NFL statistics
Games played: 170 Player stats at NFL.com
Player stats at PFR

Michael William Hegman (born January 17, 1953) is a former American football linebacker in the National Football League for the Dallas Cowboys. He played college football at Tennessee State University.

Hegman did not start playing football until his senior year at Northside High School in Memphis. He began his college career at Alabama A&M University and then transferred to Tennessee State University, where he walked on to the football team. He was a teammate of Ed "Too Tall" Jones, and the starting middle linebacker on the school's 10-0 team, that won the Black college football national championship in 1973. The next year, he finished with a school record 158 tackles.

At the end of his junior season, it was incorrectly believed that Hegman still had a year of eligibility. The Dallas Cowboys were apparently one of the only NFL teams that knew he was eligible for the draft, and drafted him in what came to be known as the Dirty Dozen Draft in 1975. Two games into the 1975 college football season, the NCAA declared him ineligible and forced him to sit our the rest of the games. Although he sat out most of the year, he was allowed to play in the Senior Bowl.

The Dallas Cowboys selected him as a junior in the seventh round (173rd overall) of the 1975 NFL Draft. The team was allowed to retain his rights, after they were proven right that he was technically eligibile, because his class had graduated that year.