CELEBRATING THE PAST : In Canton, Ohio, They Come to Relive the Glory Years of Professional Football at the Game’s Hall of Fame

The pro football season never ends in this small Ohio city, 53 miles south of Cleveland.

Every day, fans come to Canton to relive the excitement of the Super Bowl games, to stare at the bronze busts, action murals and biographies of the game’s 144 greatest heroes who are enshrined here.

They come to spend hours watching films highlighting magic moments of pro football, to linger over hundreds of fascinating exhibits tracing the history of the game, its record-shattering plays and to “my gosh look at that” over artifacts collected during the sport’s 97-year existence.

Canton, population 90,000, is the cradle of pro football, the home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Valhalla of the game’s devotees.

Why Canton?

It was here in Ray Hay’s garage on Sept. 17, 1920 that the American Professional Football Assn. was organized. Two years later, it changed its name to the National Football League. Hay was the business manager of the Canton Bulldogs, a formidable team in the formative years of the sport.

The 10 charter members of the league were the Bulldogs, the Akron Pros, the Cleveland Indians, the Dayton Triangles, all from Ohio; the Hammond Pros, Muncie Flyers from Ind.; the Racine, Wis., Cardinals; the Decatur Staleys and Rock Island Independents from Illinois, and the Rochester (N.Y.) Jeffersons.

Jim Thorpe was elected league president, a position he held for a year. A bigger-than-life statue of Thorpe greets visitors at the entrance to this football shrine.

Thorpe played for the Canton Bulldogs from 1915-1920. Ohio was the capital of pro football during the first quarter of the century. There were more professional football teams in Ohio than any state. And, Canton, boasted the Krem de Krem, champions of the NFL in 1922 and 1923. Three years later Canton played its last game.

“The Legend” is a title of a display showing a figure of a hunched-over man sitting on a bench with a Canton Bulldogs blanket wrapped around him engulfed by a huge blow-up photo mural, depicting a 1916 game. The figure represents Thorpe. It was his blanket. The dirt under the bench is from the field where the Bulldogs played. It’s now the site of condos.

During Canton’s championship years, Thorpe had moved on to another team, the Oorang Indians of LaRue, Ohio. Thorpe was player-coach of the All-American Indian team that included Dick Deer Slayer, Ted Lone Wolf, Big Bear and Joe Little Twig. The team played two seasons, 1922 and 1923.

It was in a game between the Chicago Bears and the Oorang Indians that George Halas returned a fumble 98 yards for a touchdown, a record that lasted 49 years.

The Hall of Fame is filled with displays telling anecdotes and stories of individual players and coaches such as Thorpe and Halas. It has the original accounting sheet dated Nov. 12, 1892, with the entry of $500 paid to William (Pudge) Heffelfinger, who played for the Allegheny Athletic Assn. in a game against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, the first case of a football player being paid.

It’s called Pro Football’s birth certificate and the sport is traced to the payment made to Heffelfinger, an All-American guard at Yale in 1889, 1890 and 1891. Heffelfinger was the star of the game. He forced a fumble, recovered the ball and scored the only points as Allegheny won 4-0. Touchdowns were worth four points in 1892.

A large part of the Hall of Fame obviously is devoted to the 144 enshrinees, alphabetically from Herb Adderley, Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys cornerback to Alex Wojciechowicz, Detroit Lions and Philadelphia Eagles center-linebacker.

Last year’s additions were Fred Biletnikoff, Oakland wide receiver; Mike Ditka for his years as tight end at Chicago, Philadelphia and Dallas; Jack Ham, Pittsburgh linebacker and Alan Page, Minnesota and Chicago defensive tackle.

There were 17 charter enshrinees to the Hall of Fame in 1963, Sammy Baugh, Bert Bell, Joe Carr, Dutch Clark, Red Grange, George Halas, Mel Hein, Pete Henry, Cal Hubbard, Don Hutson, Curly Lambeau, Tim Mara, George Preston Marshall, John McNally, Bronco Nagurski, Ernie Nevers and Jim Thorpe.

It takes an 80% vote of the 30-man board of selectors for four to seven new enshrinees each year.

“If there were such a thing as the most outstanding person involved with pro football since its inception it would have to be George Halas,” insisted Don R. Smith, author of the recently-published “Pro Football Hall of Fame All-Time Greats” book.

Smith has been vice president and head of public relations for the Hall of Fame for 20 years. He has been the official statistician for every Super Bowl game except the first, and is inventor of the forward passing statistical rating system used by the National Football League since 1973.

He singled out Halas “because he was one of the original organizers of the NFL, a player, the winningest coach of all-times, business manager, general manager, publicity director, you name it, he did it all. When the league was on shaky grounds as late as 1933, Halas borrowed $38,000 from a friend to keep the franchise alive.”

Quite appropriately, 2121 George Halas Dr. is the address of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The evolution of the football, helmet and uniform from the 1890s to the 1980s are shown in various exhibits. The earliest football is vintage 1895, fat and round, not pointed like today’s. Helmets at one period almost covered the player’s entire face, making it difficult to see and breathe.

There’s a special section saluting black players, beginning with Charles (The Black Cyclone) Follis, who played for the Shelby Athletic Club in 1904. During pro football’s first 14 seasons under the NFL, only 13 players were black. In pro football, like in so many other areas of society in America, blacks were shut out entirely from 1933 to 1945. It was Los Angeles Rams owner Dan Reeves who broke the color barrier in 1946 with the signing of Kenny Washington and Woody Strode.

One exhibit salutes the officials and reports on their full-time occupations, Dale Oren, a mayor; Merrill Douglas, a deputy sheriff; Hendi Ancich, a longshoreman; Don Hakes, dean of students; Dick Dolack, a pharmacist. Many are teachers. Two are in the Hall of Fame, selected for their playing days, George McAfee of the Bears and Paddy Driscoll of the Bears and Cards.

Sixteen fantastic finishes are played on a video screen, including Tom Dempsey’s 63-yard field goal in 1970, when New Orleans defeated Detroit, 19-17; the Raiders’ “holy roller” fumble in 1978 when the Oakland team beat San Diego, 21-20, and Joe Montana’s desperation pass caught by Dwight Clark for the NFL championship in 1982 when San Francisco won, 28-27, over Dallas.

Byron (Whizzer) White gets special mention for leading the NFL in rushing in 1938 and 1940, when he played with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Detroit Lions, and for becoming a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Helmets for the 28 current teams are displayed, along with the history of each team.

The record-holders are given their due. Walter Payton’s uniform that he wore when he set his all-time rushing record is here, so is the ball Art Monk caught when he established the reception record. Tom Dempsey’s 63-yard longest-all-time field goal; Tony Dorsett’s 99-yard longest-touchdown run; Mark Moseley’s 23 straight field goals; George Blanda’s 2,002 points scored; the Miami Dolphins’ perfect 1972 season, 17-0-0 are captured on film and replayed every day.

Each year, the pro football season is kicked off with the annual Hall of Fame Game played at Fawcett Stadium next to pro football’s national shrine. The stadium is the regular home of two Canton high school football teams, McKinley High and Timken High, and was built in the 1930s as a WPA project. McKinley is named after America’s 25th President, William McKinley, whose hometown and burial place is in Canton. Last year’s Hall of Fame game featured the Rams and the Bengals.

The Hall of Fame is a huge place, 51,000 square feet, a four-building complex, three times its original size when it first opened 25 years ago, and dominating the Hall is a 52-foot-high football-shaped dome.

For the avid pro football fan, a visit to the Pro Football Hall of Fame is like dying and going to heaven.