Mel Renfro made the Pro Bowl in each of his first ten NFL seasons, which is a run almost nobody in the history of the league can match. Drafted out of Oregon in 1964, he started at safety, moved to cornerback, and was outstanding at both, finishing with 52 career interceptions in fourteen seasons, all of them with Dallas.

He led the NFL in interceptions in 1969 and in punt return yards as a rookie, and he was a core piece of the Doomsday Defense that carried the Cowboys to five NFC titles and two championships in Super Bowls VI and XII. He was named to the NFL's All-Decade Team of the 1960s.

The Cowboys put him in the Ring of Honor in 1981, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame elected him in 1996. Before football he was a world-class track athlete at Oregon, which explains a lot about how he covered ground.