Former Dallas Cowboys and Texas A&M linebacker Dat Nguyen is being inducted into The College Football Hall of Fame on Tuesday. Nguyen, the first Vietnamese-American player in NFL history, joins a 2017 class of inductees that also includes luminaries such as Peyton Manning, Brian Urlacher, Marshall Faulk, and Steve Spurrier.
Nguyen’s remarkable story began in a refugee camp. His parents were among 50 members of the Nguyen family that fled their village in war-ravaged Vietnam. His mother was pregnant when the family finally reached America. Dat was born in a refugee camp in Arkansas. The family relocated to the Texas Gulf Coast town of Rockport and opened a Vietnamese restaurant.