By Steve Schaefer

It’s a common human habit that when one milestone or achievement is reached, we look ahead to what’s next. At high school graduations the focus is usually on college; as senior year at Syracuse winds down the job hunt becomes all-consuming; and when we see an Orangemen legend like Floyd Little get inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton it’s perfectly natural to ponder what fellow alum might follow him and his predecessors.

Despite our well-chronicled struggles of the past decade, Syracuse has a long and proud tradition of sending young men into the NFL who finish their careers among the all-time greats, from Jim Brown and Floyd Little to Larry Csonka, John Mackey, Art Monk and Jim Ringo.

My colleague Euclid 419er noted in his lament Monday that no Orange #44 will make it to Canton in Little’s footsteps now that his number is retired, but at present it may very well be that no Orange alum currently eligible for a bust or still active will be enshrined.

Donovan McNabb heads to Washington this season after 11 years as a lightning rod in Philadelphia after being taken with the #2 pick in the 1999 draft, but short of a career-ending stretch of Super Bowl wins a-la John Elway, he faces a steep uphill climb toward Canton.

While McNabb has been an upper-echelon quarterback for most of his time in the league, he’s done it at a time when passing games have exploded league-wide. Without a ring (and perhaps multiple), McNabb would face a wait several years long once he became eligible. By the time voters in the notoriously difficult process are ready to give McNabb his due it is likely he’ll be overshadowed by first-ballot guarantees like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady.

A pair of Manning’s teammates are the Syracuse players most likely to merit consideration, Dwight Freeney and Marvin Harrison. Freeney currently stands 39th on the all-time sack list wth 84. At 30 years old, Freeney likely has a number of good years left, but with a game built on speed and coming off an ankle injury that slowed him in Super Bowl 44, his acsent up that list is anything but certain.

That’s not to mention that a lofty sack total is hardly a guarantee of admission into Canton. Longtime Saints linebacker Rickey Jackson, inducted along with Little, Jerry Rice, Emmitt Smith and Dick LeBeau last weekend, had to wait 15 long years for his time, despite standing 10th on the all-time sack list with 128.

The Orangeman that seems most likely to be a lock for the Hall of Fame is Harrison, but there are a number of hurdles for the wideout to clear. Harrison, who hasn’t played since 2008, stands 5th on the all-time receiving yards list with 14,580, 5th in touchdowns with 128 and 2nd, behind Rice, in career receptions with 1,102.

While those statistics certainly make Harrison look like a shoe-in, he may have to wait his turn behind 2010 finalists Cris Carter, Tim Brown and Andre Reed, not to mention Shannon Sharpe, who is sure to take some votes away from wide receivers until he is finally elected. Also up for consideration are the few currently active wideouts who are near or ahead of Harrison in certain categories and could muddy the waters for him in the years ahead. Terrell Owens and Randy Moss are the two obvious examples, though Greatest Show On Turf members Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt will also get a push.

Perhaps the bigger concern for Harrison is that it may be more likely he’ll be wearing an orange jumpsuit in the next few years than a yellow blazer. Harrison was implicated in a Philadelphia shooting, as detailed exhaustively by Jason Fagone in the February 2010 issue of GQ, and the last development in the complicated saga was a mid-January report from ESPN.com that the FBI was joining the investigation.

Working in Harrison’s favor: the voting process for the Pro Football Hall of Fame explicitly tells the 44-member voting committee to consider only football when making their selections, as has famously come up in the selections of Lawrence Taylor and Michael Irvin over the last decade-plus.

So after Floyd Little’s long-overdue induction and rousing speech, it may be another long wait before Canton turns Orange again.