Bo Jackson and DeMarcus Ware are two of the best football players produced by Alabama.

From McAdory High School in McCalla, Jackson went on to win the Heisman Trophy at Auburn in a College Football Hall of Fame career, then played in the NFL while simultaneously becoming a Major League Baseball All-Star.

From Auburn High School, Ware went on to Troy, where he blossomed into a first-round draft choice to start an NFL career that will culminate in his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday.

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Jackson is almost 20 years older than Ware, but their careers are connected. Without Jackson, Ware said, he wouldn’t have become one of the NFL’s greatest players.

“He came to the Boys and Girls Club when I was a young kid around about 14 or 15 years old,” Ware told NBC Sports about Jackson, “and he just told me, ‘DeMarcus, if you get a college scholarship, you can eat for free.’ That really meant a lot to me because my mom worked in the cafeteria all of my school years. That’s the reason that I started playing.

“I remember selling Cokes at an Auburn University football game and him coming out getting recognized, and I thought to myself, ‘Oh, my God, that’s Bo Knows.’ I started playing football my ninth-grade year, playing running back – I don’t play running back anymore. It was so cool for him to motivate me to play, and that’s the reason that I started.”

Back then, Ware was more interested in baseball and track. But he got the football scholarship – from Troy State (as it was then known), which was transitioning from NCAA Division I-AA to college football’s top level.

“I’ve always kind of been under the radar,” Ware told the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “I was kind of unheralded, I guess, coming out of high school. I always had confidence in my talent. I knew that if I worked hard, I would get what I wanted and accomplish my goals.”

Ware had a plan if he hadn’t gotten a football scholarship: Enroll in Troy’s ROTC program, study computer science, serve in the military for 12 years, receive his honorable discharge as an officer and start a business.

While with the Trojans, Ware gained about 50 pounds, got 3 inches taller and became faster, too. In Troy’s first season in the Sun Belt Conference in 2004, Ware won the league’s Defensive Player of the Year Award.

From a hardly recruited prep player, Ware came to the 2005 NFL Draft as a coveted pass-rusher.

The Dallas Cowboys chose Ware with the 11th pick, with owner and general manager Jerry Jones trumping coach Bill Parcells’ preferred prospects – Maryland linebacker Shawne Merriman and LSU defensive lineman Marcus Spears. The San Diego Chargers picked Merriman immediately after Ware. The Cowboys were able to get Spears at No. 20.

Ware said Jones and Parcells made a bet on the rookie’s future: If he didn’t average a least eight sacks through his first three seasons, Parcells could brand Jones’ pick as a bust. Ware accumulated 33.5 sacks in his first three seasons, and he said he still has in his office the $1 payoff from Parcells that Jones passed on to him.

Ware spent nine seasons with Dallas. He led the NFL in sacks in 2008 and 2010, earned Pro Bowl recognition in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 and was a first-team All-Pro selection in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011 as an outside linebacker for the Cowboys.

After the 2013 season, Dallas released Ware even though he had a season left on his contract. Chasing a championship, Ware signed with the Denver Broncos. He made the right choice, with the Broncos winning Super Bowl 50 to cap the 2015 campaign, the middle of Ware’s three seasons with Denver.

“I had a herniated disk I played with,” Ware told the Athletic about the championship season. “I was beat up out there playing. I would go and get the Toradol shots right before the game. I didn’t practice for really about six, seven months, just trying to get the back right and get that inflammation down, and I’d just get a shot on Sunday. A couple of games before the AFC Championship Game, I couldn’t even walk straight up.”

But in the AFC Championship Game, Ware registered seven hits on New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in the Broncos’ 20-18 victory. In the Super Bowl, Ware sacked Cam Newton twice in Denver’s 24-10 victory over the Carolina Panthers.

Ware earned Pro Bowl recognition twice more with the Broncos.

Ware’s sack tally shows 138.5 in 178 NFL regular-season games, the ninth-most sacks in NFL history. He had 7.5 more sacks in eight playoff games.

Ware was chosen as a member of the Class of 2023 in his second year of eligibility for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Among players note primarily as pass-rushers, only fellow Hall of Famers Reggie White, Bruce Smith and Lawrence Taylor have more Pro Bowl selections than Ware.

“I go back and I just think about where I started,” Ware said during an appearance on NBC Sports’ “My Main Man Michael Smith,” “picking 25 cents an egg in the chicken coop, cutting 10 acres of grass, driving to an Auburn University game to sell cokes just to make money for the family. And coming from Troy University where there were so many doubters and going into a draft class that was amazing and being a first-rounder — and not only a first-rounder but one of the best. And sometimes I pinch myself a little bit because I see all that hard work paying off. Every single time I just wake up now, I’m like, ‘Dude, do you know what you have done?’”

The enshrinement ceremony for the Class of 2023 will be held at 11 a.m. CDT Saturday at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio. NFL Network and ESPN will televise the enshrinement ceremony.

Joining Ware in the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Class of 2023 are cornerback Ronde Barber, coach Don Coryell, linebacker Chuck Howley, defensive lineman Joe Klecko, cornerback Darrelle Revis, cornerback Ken Riley, offensive tackle Joe Thomas and linebacker Zach Thomas.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s newest members will receive their gold jackets to signify their membership in the “best fraternity ever” at a ceremony on Friday night in Canton.

“This class is pretty cool because usually when you look at a lot of classes in the Hall, there are a lot of offensive guys,” Ware said. “You got the quarterbacks, wide receivers and guys, to be honest with you, who would sell tickets. To me, for the first time, this is a defensive-minded class, and being in the class, you are always with the best of the best. I’m with the best of the best. The guys who I am talking about had earned it.”

Jones will serve as Ware’s presenter on Saturday for Hall of Fame enshrinement.

“When someone takes a chance on you,” Ware said during an appearance on “The Adam Schefter Podcast,” “gives you an opportunity – I could have went at 12 to San Diego, I could have went later on because it was some phenomenal players in my draft class – for him to bring me in and sort of blanket me to help me through my whole career all the way to this day. If I call him, he answers. If I need a meeting with him, he opens up that door. …

“And now the biggest moment of my career, he gets to call my name one more time. I think that’s one of the coolest moments for him because Jerry Jones doesn’t get emotional. When he announced to me that I had made the Hall of Fame – the knock – when I saw that, it was like his son going into the Hall of Fame.”

Ware will be the third of the new Hall of Famers to deliver his induction speech on Saturday.

Ware said his speech would have a tone of “gratitude, humility, but also I want people to be motivated for change. No matter what environment you’re in, your environment doesn’t dictate your choices. The choices that you make with what you have can get you where you want to be. I think that’s the main thing that I try to tell these young kids right now. They feel like they got to be in IMG, you got to go to the SEC. You don’t. Whatever door opens up for you, you go through that thing 100 percent because it will lead you to another one.”

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.