Steelers_BucketList

WHERE: Canton, Ohio

WHEN: It is open year-round and the hours are 9:00 am to 8:00 pm, Memorial Day through Labor Day and 9:00 am to 5:00 pm the rest of the year. The Hall of Fame is closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

HOW TO DO IT: The HOF website (www.profootballhof.com) provides everything from ticket prices to lodging and dining options and is the best resource for planning a trip to Canton. Those who can’t make it to the Hall of Fame can go to Google as an alternative. Videos of Steelers’ Hall of Fame speeches are easily found on the Internet and worth watching.

COST FACTOR: $$–$$$$. A day trip to the Hall of Fame won’t set you back much, provided your credit card doesn’t get too much of a workout at the gift shop. Admission ranges from $17 to $24 and season passes are sold as well. The cost rises significantly if you have to fly and then spend a couple of days in Canton, whether attending the HOF induction ceremony in August or making a vacation out of the visit to one of football’s holiest sites.

DIFFICULTY FACTOR: . The only caveat here is that going to the Hall of Fame can be a challenge if you want to attend the annual induction ceremony. The demand for hotels increases exponentially for the weekend that is a celebration of the NFL’s past and the return of a new season. It takes planning and patience—and a few bucks—to visit the Hall of Fame during its biggest weekend of the year. But it is well worth it if one of your favorite players is getting enshrined in Canton.

BUCKET RANK: . The Steelers’ imprint is all over the Hall of Fame, putting a trip to Canton high on the bucket list, especially for an induction ceremony. The speeches are always heartfelt, usually emotional and are the can’t-miss part of the weekend. The magnitude of receiving a gold jacket is palpable during those speeches as former Steelers running back Jerome Bettis can attest. “That was a culmination and my opportunity to thank all of the people that had helped to get me to the point where I was,” Bettis said of his 2015 induction. “There were some nervous moments beforehand but once I got up there I felt really comfortable.”

We have covered many of the bucket-list items but a big-ticket one is still out there, and it pulls together the best of the Steelers’ history. The Pro Football Hall of Fame leads off this chapter, one that covers the Steelers’ illustrious past and the recent period in which the team played in three Super Bowls and won two of them over a six-season span. The 1970s—and how an organization that had been an afterthought built a dynasty—dominates Steelers history but doesn’t have an exclusive hold on it. This chapter jumps around but it is chock full of information and anecdotes that help tell the story of the Steelers.

The six Super Bowl trophies that the Steelers display at team headquarters aren’t just a powerful symbol of their glorious past. They are also a not-so-subtle reminder to everyone in the organization of what is expected in the future.

Greatness—or at least the pursuit of it—may permeate the Steelers’ practice facility but nowhere is it better encapsulated than in Canton, Ohio.

The city that is only about 100 miles west of Pittsburgh is home to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, a contained village that displays bronzed busts of all who have achieved football immortality. Canton tells their stories as well of those of the NFL.

It is not an exaggeration to say the Steelers have erected their own wing at the Hall of Fame and the HOF lists 27 inductees with significant ties to the Steelers.

That number doesn’t include Dick LeBeau, who was a Hall of Fame cornerback for the Detroit Lions, but coached 11 seasons for the Steelers and burnished his reputation as an innovator while serving two stints as the team’s defensive coordinator. It also doesn’t include Tony Dungy, who got the call to the Hall in 2016 as a coach but played two seasons for the Steelers, later worked for Noll, and considers Chuck Noll his greatest coaching influence.

Steelers started pouring into the Hall of Fame shortly after the great players from the 1970s started retiring. That and Pittsburgh’s proximity to Canton regularly turned induction ceremonies into Terrible Towel–waving events.

That won’t stop anytime soon as players from the 2005–10 Steelers teams that played in three Super Bowls become eligible for the Hall of Fame (more on those a little later).

A handful of former Steelers, meanwhile, could gain entrance to the Hall of Fame as senior candidates. The Hall of Fame Senior Committee nominates former players, coaches, and contributors who might have been overlooked for enshrinement.

The three Steelers who top that list for me are Art Rooney Jr., Donnie Shell, and L.C. Greenwood.

All were finalists for the Hall of Fame before dropping off the ballot and all might have encountered some silly if tacit rule about not letting too many Steelers from the 1970s into Canton.

Rooney quarterbacked the drafts that laid the foundation for the Steelers’ dominance in the 1970s. Shell helped the Steelers win four Super Bowls and later made the NFL All-Pro team three consecutive seasons in the early 1980s. Greenwood was a charter member of the Steel Curtain and the Steelers credit the six-time Pro Bowler with 68.5 career sacks, third-most in team history.

Greenwood will likely get into the Hall of Fame one day—Joe Greene has said it is a football injustice that Greenwood does not yet have a bust in Canton—but he won’t get to experience it as he passed away in 2013 at the age of 67.

Shell will get a Hall of Fame bounce from Dungy, who picked his former Steelers teammate to present him at the 2016 induction ceremony. That visibility should at least generate conversation about Shell, whose 51 interceptions still rank third on the Steelers’ all-time list behind Hall of Famers Mel Blount and Jack Butler.

Rooney’s drafts from 1970 to ’74 are the stuff of legend, but will Hall of Fame voters allow a third Rooney into Canton? His father, Art, and brother, Dan, are already Hall of Famers, and if Art Jr. is going to join them he will need the Senior Committee to nominate him.

Of more immediate Steelers links to the Hall of Fame, Alan Faneca advanced to the final 15 in the 2016 voting and it is only a matter of when the former guard makes it to Canton. Here are four other Steelers who are still playing or recently retired who at least merit strong consideration for the Hall of Fame in the coming years.

S Troy Polamalu: The eight-time Pro Bowler is a likely first-ballot Hall of Famer. Polamalu (who is eligible for the Hall in 2020) and Ed Reed are the two best safeties of their generation. The criteria for a Hall of Famer is elastic and personal preference is also a factor, but Polamalu checks off every box.

QB Ben Roethlisberger: Big Ben is a lock, in my opinion, even if he never throws another pass. He has won a pair of Super Bowls and played in three of them. He owns every major passing record in Steelers history and if quarterbacks are ultimately judged by wins, consider this: Roethlisberger has never had a losing season and is one of only four quarterbacks to win at least 100 games in his first 150 starts. The others are Tom Brady, Joe Montana, and Terry Bradshaw.

WR Hines Ward: There is a bit of a logjam at wide receiver and Ward, who is eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2017, may have a wait as long as Jerome Bettis did—as deserving as he too is of football immortality. The trouble Ward might encounter is he was never considered an elite wideout and never fit the prototype of a dynamic pass catcher. But he is a Super Bowl MVP, finished his career as one of only nine NFL players with 1,000 career catches and is in the conversation for best blocking wide receiver of all time. He will get to Canton at some point.

OLB James Harrison: I believe Kurt Warner’s incredible story—from bagging groceries, to playing in the the Arena Football League to achieving NFL greatness—should count when it comes to Hall of Fame consideration. Same goes for Harrison, who was cut four times by the Steelers before he finally stuck with them in 2004. His 75 career sacks after the 2015 season ranked second in Steelers history and no pass rusher played better than Harrison over a four- or five-season span, including 2008, when he won NFL Defensive Player of the Year honors.

The Steelers List 24 of Their Own as Inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame

Bert Bell, co-owner, 1963

John “Blood” McNally, coach/player, 1963

Art Rooney, founder, 1964

Bill Dudley, running back, 1966

Walt Kiesling, coach/player, 1966

Bobby Layne, quarterback, 1967

Ernie Stautner, defensive tackle, 1969

Joe Greene, defensive tackle, 1987

John Henry Johnson, running back, 1987

Jack Ham, linebacker, 1988

Mel Blount, cornerback, 1989

Terry Bradshaw, quarterback, 1989

Franco Harris, running back, 1990

Jack Lambert, linebacker, 1990

Chuck Noll, coach, 1993

Mike Webster, center, 1997

Dan Rooney, chairman and president, 2000

Lynn Swann, wide receiver, 2001

John Stallworth, wide receiver, 2002

Rod Woodson, cornerback, 2009

Jack Butler, cornerback, 2012

Dermontti Dawson, center, 2012

Jerome Bettis, running back, 2015

Kevin Greene, linebacker, 2016

EXTRA POINTS

Chuck Noll Saw Greatness in Kevin Greene

Kevin Greene, who made the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2016 in his fifth year as a finalist, recorded 35.5 sacks from 1993 to ’95 with the Steelers, and he once received the ultimate compliment from Chuck Noll. The former coach receded into retirement following the 1991 season, largely steering clear of the Steelers so he wouldn’t cast a shadow over his successor, Bill Cowher. But he attended a game at Three Rivers Stadium when Greene was playing for the Steelers and he took notice of him. “I was sitting next to Chuck watching the game and very early on he said, ‘Boy that 91’s pretty good,’” said former Steelers director of communications Joe Gordon. “That coming from Chuck Noll that quickly…after that I was a big Kevin Greene fan.”