WACO, Texas -- RGIII is now in bronze at Baylor.
Before the 10th-ranked Bears played their first game at McLane Stadium on Sunday night, a 9 1/2-foot bronze statue of Robert Griffin III was unveiled.
The statue of Baylor's only Heisman Trophy winner is in a plaza between the stadium and the Brazos River, where some fans arrived by boat for the game -- and others dived in for relief from temperatures in the mid-90s. That plaza is at the end of a 775-foot pedestrian bridge over the water that many fans walk over to get to the stadium.
"If you go to Washington D.C., before you go watch the Redskins and Robert, you go see Mr. Lincoln. That's a great statue. If you're going to go to New York City, go see the Statue of Liberty," Ken Starr, the school's president, said during a dedication ceremony. "When you come to Waco, you're going to see the statue of Judge Baylor, Coach (Grant) Teaff and Robert Griffin III."
It was during Griffin's last season at Baylor before being the second overall pick in the NFL draft that the idea of a new campus stadium really took off and donations started pouring in to make that a reality. The Bears hadn't played on the Waco campus since 1935 before Sunday night's game against SMU.
"No, it wasn't just me. If you look at the guys who came in with me, the guys who were there before we got here. They are all part of it, from Grant Teaff to coach (Art) Briles," Griffin said, before starting to name a long list of his Bears teammates. "They know we couldn't have done it without each other."
Sporting a dark green coat representing a primary Baylor color, the Washington Redskins quarterback said he never dreamed of having a statue.
"It's incredible. People are excited about football. I don't know if we could have said that many years ago when coach Briles and myself and our first class got here," Griffin said. "Now we have a lot of guys in the NFL. We've got a stadium on campus and the future is very bright. But this is only the beginning. There's much more to come."
Copyright 2014 by The Associated Press
