Hall of Fame still hasn’t made him their Guy

Talk about hang time.

Sixteen years have passed since Ray Guy, generally recognized as the greatest punter in NFL history, first became eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Sixteen years that the man whose very name is synonymous with punting excellence has been left hanging, the Hall of Fame selection committee annually judging his considerable accomplishments to be not . . . quite . . . worthy.

He’s starting to lose patience.

“The only thing I can think of is, special-teams players are not special enough to have a place in the Hall of Fame,” Guy, 58, says in a Southern drawl from his office in Hattiesburg, Miss. “They think a punter has no place in the Hall of Fame because that position does not represent what a Hall of Famer should be.

“Which I think is a bunch of bull.”

In 14 seasons with the Oakland and Los Angeles Raiders, Guy played on three Super Bowl-winning teams and earned seven Pro Bowl nods before retiring in 1986. The first player drafted in the first round strictly as a punter, he was the 23rd pick in the 1973 NFL draft. The Georgia native and former Southern Mississippi All-American averaged more than 42 yards a punt in his pro career and his lofty signature kicks helped to popularize the term “hang time.”

John Madden, the Raiders’ coach when Guy was drafted, says the punter’s value to the team was “immense.” Owner Al Davis called the 6-foot-3, 190-pound Guy “the best ever to play his position in the history of the game,” and when the NFL put together its 75th-anniversary all-time team in 1994, Guy was the punter.

“We drafted Ray Guy in the first round and everyone across the country went, ‘Wow, look at the Raiders, they’re taking a punter No. 1, they’re goofy,’ ” Madden says. “But in all the years I was with the Raiders and all the drafts that we did, the most unanimous decision we made was to take Ray Guy.

“Internally, it was never controversial. It helped our special teams, obviously, it helped our defense by getting bigger, longer punts and it helped our offense because we didn’t have to press anything on third down. I used to tell our quarterbacks not to push it because if we had an incomplete pass on third down, the worst that could happen is we’d have Ray Guy punt it.”

It’s not as if the 44 media members who make up the Hall of Fame selection committee are unaware of all this. Guy has been a finalist for election seven times, most recently this year, but he still has not cracked the lineup. (Jan Stenerud, who played 19 seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs and Green Bay Packers, is the only kicker in the Hall of Fame who did not play another position.)

“The deal is, if you’re going to do it the way it’s supposed to be done, do it by every position, regardless of what position that is,” Guy says of the Hall’s selection process.

“Everything’s important, and if somebody has excelled over the years and taken that one position that was not recognized and brought it front and center, let them go in.

“Don’t hold them back just because they’re a special-teams player. A lot of guys make their living on special teams.”

Recently relocated from his hometown of Thomson, Ga., Guy is a father of two, a grandfather to one and has been married 35 years to wife Beverly.

He makes his living these days as a special projects manager at Southern Miss, working as sort of a goodwill ambassador for his alma mater in advance of the university’s centennial celebration in 2010.

He also spends about 2 1/2 months each year running his two-day kicking camps, which have sent dozens of punters to the NFL and college football. This year’s schedule includes a June 28-29 stop at Santa Ana Mater Dei High.

But campers beware: Don’t ask for a demonstration.

“Are you kidding?” Guy says. “That’s a call to 9-1-1, man. I’d be in a body brace from my neck to my toes.

“You know what? Those kids ask me all the time and I tell them, ‘You want to see me punt, go turn the film on.’

“I wish I could. I just can’t.”

Though Guy mastered his craft like no one else, he says he never wanted to be known strictly as a punter.

“I knew the importance of what I was doing,” he says. “I was transforming bad situations into good situations, but I still would rather have played.”

As a pitcher, Guy was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals and Atlanta Braves, according to his website, and threw a no-hitter at Southern Miss.

As a free safety in college, he made 18 interceptions and was an All-American.

The Raiders even listed him as their third-string quarterback.

But his forte, of course, was punting. When the Raiders first laid eyes on him, Madden says, “He was the best that any of us had ever seen in our lives.”

His legend only grew during his time with the Raiders.

A Hall nod would cement it.

“That’s what you might call your final resting place,” Guy says. “It’s not like getting a gold watch or something like that. This is something that’s permanent.”

--

jerome.crowe@latimes.com