August 4, 2016
After a few false starts, I made my first proper journey that summer to Canton, Ohio, battered Rust Belt birthplace of the machine that batters bodies, prints money, and kills our Sundays. Originally called the American Professional Football Association, the NFL got its start here in 1920 with the Canton Bulldogs running back Jim Thorpe designated as the league’s first president. The founding confab took place at a Hupmobile car dealership; and it felt fitting that this seminal American creation—the NFL—would be born in a showroom of hustlers.
As Elvis fans make pilgrimages to Graceland, football zealots come to Canton. Where to begin with Canton? I came for the indoctrination ceremonies for the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s class of 2016. “Enshrinement Weekend,” as this early August festival is known, marks a reunion of returning Hall of Famers who are “welcomed home” to Canton in a grand three-day cotillion. Let’s maybe begin with that notion: “Home.”
A little over three hundred Hall of Famers have a “home” in Canton. They reside permanently here in brass bust form. While many can’t make it in the flesh, their legends loom: Canton is laden with myth, glory, and ghost. “Here’s the deal,” the coach and broadcaster John Madden explained during his 2006 induction speech. After the Hall of Fame closes for the day, and all the fans and visitors and maintenance people depart, something happens with the immortals left in the building. “I believe that the busts talk to each other,” Madden said. Vince Lombardi, Walter Payton, and now John Madden himself would be “forever and ever talking about whatever,” Madden said.
“That’s what I believe.”
“Canton” rates as one of those iconic American place-names, like “Cooperstown” or “Gettysburg.” Football is of course the franchise here. But the city also conjures impressions particular to the sport’s heavier impacts. By contrast, when baseball’s Hall of Famers show up in Cooperstown for their sport’s induction rite, the gathering marks a celebration of a game that’s allowed its stars to age softly. Whitey Ford, Hank Aaron, and Sandy Koufax all look stellar as old men, sitting on the back porch of the Otesaga Resort Hotel. Here, Canton’s homecoming is both a celebration of the game they excelled in and a showcase of its hazards. Immortality loses some luster if you can’t remember why you’re here.
You can identify the royalty of Canton by their signature “gold jackets.” They’re actually more canary yellow, better suited to an announcer for a regional sports network. A significant number of dead Hall of Famers request burial in their hallowed attire. But here among the still-walking, these garments demarcate primacy, as cardinals in Rome are set apart by their scarlet robes (blood-colored, reflecting willingness to die for their faith).
Canton is the football Vatican. The shrine is rich with pomp, freighted with demons, and roamed, gingerly, by elect beings who have come “home.” The rest of us may only visit.
I flew to Cleveland and drove about sixty miles south to Canton, seat of Stark County, Ohio, and final resting place of President William McKinley. Canton is like many Rust Belt cities that have bled manufacturing jobs and been forced to adapt to service-economy realities. Its recoveries have been uneven and its blemishes present themselves over dreary blocks of abandoned homes and buildings. As with the game that made it famous, Canton has expended its share of worry over what’s coming next.
Whatever the city’s future holds, past and present are polished clean for the enshrinement ceremonies. Streets downtown are decked out with American flags on lampposts and WELCOME HOME banners on the sides of buildings. Every bit of signage bears the Hall of Fame logo, a miniaturized version of the circular temple that is effectively the Flag of Canton.
“Are you here for induction?” I was asked a few times, as if I were pregnant. The construction threw me at first (it’s simply “induction,” not “the induction”—like “prom,” as opposed to “the prom”). But it was meant to be welcoming, and Cantonians could not have been more so.
Festivities began Thursday night with the enshrinee’s Gold Jacket Dinner at the Canton Memorial Civic Center. This was a can’t-miss affair, according to all who’d been here before. I arrived early, made my way through the waiting crowd that included a lineup of pageant contestants, the Enshrinement Queen, Miss Canton, a bunch of city and Hall dignitaries, a brass band, and a mosh pit of Gold Jackets.
Tony Dorsett was the first football cardinal I recognized, and not just by the jacket. He was a foot or two in front of me waiting to enter the Civic Center. His face was as fresh and boyish as I remember him, if not his brain or body. “I will never forget that ninety-nine-yard run you had,” I told Dorsett without hesitation. Something about Canton melts your instinct for respectful distance and restores you (or me) to the unabashed fan boy who used to hang out in the lobby of the Newton Marriott and hounded visiting players for autographs when they came to town to play the Pats.
That epic Dorsett dash from 1983 remained vivid to me. It was the longest run from scrimmage in NFL history (a record that can only be tied). “I was in high school and watching that game with my brother,” I took this opportunity to inform Touchdown Tony, as if he gave a damn. It was against Minnesota on a Monday night, I recalled helpfully. Dorsett was kind to humor me.
“Ten men on the field,” he said. Yes, the Cowboys happened to be a man short on that play. Fullback Ron Springs had gotten mixed up and remained on the sideline. I’m guessing Dorsett could have recited every last detail of that thirty-five-year-old event—the blocking scheme, the name of the formation, the exact play call, everything. But I’ve read enough about Dorsett’s post-playing days to also know the price of these memories.
Dorsett’s short-term recall is shot. “He just can’t tell you who dropped him off at his house no more than 10 minutes ago,” Gary Myers of the Daily News wrote of Dorsett in what has become the evergreen genre of stories about demolished former NFL players living out their days in pain and fog. Several Gold Jackets have been the subjects of these agonized hero-in-winter yarns. They include similar refrains (“I have good days and I have bad days,” Dorsett told Myers), similar retroactive fatalism (“If you play as long as I did, you are going to have something wrong with you”), and similar lines of frustration (“I looked in the mirror and I say ‘Who are you,’” Dorsett told CNN in 2013). In most cases, the accounts will conclude with some declaration from the broken player that he has no regrets. “Hell yeah,” Dorsett said, “I would do it again.”
NFL Network carried the Gold Jacket Dinner live over three full hours. A few dozen banquet tables were set up across the McKinley Room, each circular setting anchored by a blue bucket of Bud Light bottles. I found a seat in the back of the hall, in the middle of a bunch of Packer fans with Cheesehead hats who had come to witness the induction of their Gunslinger God, #4, Brett Favre. We watched the eminences file in. Forrest Gregg was in a wheelchair, Willie Roaf had become obese, and Lynn Swann (a trained ballet dancer, whom Curt Gowdy once called “the Baryshnikov of football”) looked like he could still play. ESPN’s Chris Berman was a most approachable destination for the selfie-swarms.
Rich Eisen, the perky über-host of the NFL Network, began a serviceable lounge act as the evening’s master of ceremonies. He welcomed all “football-loving people” to Canton. He said “welcome home” to the 141 Gold Jackets who had returned and teased the induction of the 8 newest Hall of Famers. For the first time, he said, these newcomers would “don their gold jackets, unveil the busts, and become permanent residents of Canton, Ohio.” Eisen also extended a special thank-you to Haggar, the menswear company that had been making the Gold Jackets since 1978. That—1978—might have been the last time I thought of Haggar, which I guess used to advertise a lot during sporting events. Canton reeked of throwback garments, like the mothballed yellow slacks I found in my father’s closet after he died.
Maybe it was because I came to football in the seventies, but that’s what Canton conjured for me: the NFL in the time of those Miller Lite ads of the “Hey, you’re Boog Powell” era. When men were men and concussions were “dings” and only Broadway Joe was allowed gender ambiguity. “My wife still wears panty hose because of Joe Namath,” Canton mayor Thomas Bernabei informed the banquet-goers, by way of welcoming us.
Paul Anka was in the banquet room, too, because of course Paul Anka was in the banquet room—an actual throwback lounge act (like Haggar, who knew he was still in business?). He performed a version of “My Way” with verses fashioned into rhyming ditties for each new inductee. I saw a few of the Gold Jackets stifling chuckles. Anka wore a three-piece vested suit and really should have been smoking Merits.
Goodell spoke briefly and was treated mildly by the crowd, except for a few scattered jeers (allaying some concern from Park Ave that Goodell might actually hear boos from the “football-loving people” of Canton, as close as a commissioner ever comes to a home-field advantage). Speakers who acknowledged Goodell spoke of him with a hint of pity, as if they were talking about a wounded horse. “The majority of executives and players appreciate you,” retiring PR czar Joe Browne reassured Goodell, turning to him on the dais.
Hall of Fame president David Baker welcomed the returning Gold Jackets back to “this city of excellence.” “The most inspiring place on earth,” he called Canton. Baker, who towers six feet nine inches and weighs four hundred pounds, has a taste for bright white suits that make him resemble a cartoon polar bear. He is an affable behemoth of bullshit—which I don’t mean to be disparaging, necessarily, because you’d want a true believer presiding at the temple, right? Baker fits this bill, if not his suit.
“There is a special bond between football and America,” proselytized Baker, the former commissioner of the Arena Football League. Baker referred to the Hall as “the ecumenical church of football” and himself as “the Knights Templar of the holy game of football.” Like Baker, the Hall of Fame lays it on thick with the “excellence, excellence, excellence” message. Its mission statement—displayed conspicuously—is relentless: Honor the Heroes of the Game, it says on banners and signs. “Preserve its history. Promote its values. Celebrate excellence EVERYWHERE.” ALL CAPS is the official style.
Implied, also, is an unspoken mission of the Pro Football Hall of Fame: to keep certain subjects off-limits.
Unlike baseball, football’s Legion of Honor does not discriminate for bad behavior. Shoeless Joe Jackson and Barry Bonds can be banned from Cooperstown, but they would be welcomed in Canton if they played football. Gold Jackets can be stained but still worn.
The punishing Charger linebacker Junior Seau was enshrined in the Hall of Fame the previous summer, three years after he committed suicide at forty-three with a CTE-addled brain. His surviving daughter, Sydney, planned to deliver a speech about her father at his induction ceremony, in keeping with his dying wishes. But the Hall did not allow it, citing a recent policy forbidding speeches on behalf of dead members. Instead, the Hall planned to show a video highlighting the copious excellence of Seau’s career, but leaving out the grief that came after. There would be no mention of Seau’s head trauma, suicide, or (certainly not) the wrongful death lawsuit that his family had filed against the NFL. “Our mission is to honor the heroes of the game, and Junior is a hero of the game,” Baker explained to the New York Times. “We’re going to celebrate his life, not the death and other issues.”
The finessing of “other issues” during Enshrinement Weekend makes for many elephants in many rooms. Denial is practiced aggressively. Checkered histories hide in plain view.
Still, there was part of me that appreciated this, the idea that on-field excellence would be the only measure of judgment here, consistent with the spirit of respite. Would the busts of Unitas and Lombardi shun the bust of, say, O. J. Simpson after hours? It would seem wrong if they did.
As the Gold Jacket Dinner dishes were cleared, the Class of 2016 was called to the Pigskin Torah to receive their sacred garments. Brett Favre was the exalted name of the group. Proper testament to his excellence was paid in an inspiring video tribute. But there was not, to be sure, anything about his painkiller addiction, his concussions, or the unwelcome penis selfies he was caught sending to a female reporter, among “other issues” that pocked his career. No mention, either, of the shooting in Philadelphia that inductee Marvin Harrison, Peyton Manning’s favorite receiver in Indianapolis, was caught up in in 2008 (Harrison was not charged); or the gambling fraud scandal that earned five-time Super Bowl winner Eddie DeBartolo a one-year ban from the league and eventually cost him control of the 49ers, which he had owned for twenty-three years.
The new class received their proper Gold Jacket due and welcome “home” hugs from their new brothers in immortality. Well, not all, because Kenny (“the Snake”) Stabler—dazzling Raiders quarterback of my youth—had passed away from a world of suffering the previous summer. This was a few months before Stabler was diagnosed, posthumously, with CTE and voted (also posthumously) into Canton. Immortality loses even more luster when you die too young.
Stabler was the Brett Favre of his era, a southpaw model of the scrambling free spirited good ol’ boy who was thrilling to watch. The Snake was synonymous with the outlaw Raider teams of the 1970s. “A perfect marriage between quarterback and team” is how his special video described Stabler and the Raiders. (There was apparently some strain on the marriage, however, evidenced by the bizarre absence of any Raider gear in Stabler’s Hall of Fame display; instead there was an AFC Pro Bowl uniform, a game ball, and Stabler’s helmet from the New Orleans Saints, for whom he played a forgettable nineteen games at the tail end of his career.)
By 10:30 p.m., the Gold Jacket Dinner was officially dragging. It was time to bid good night to Miss Canton and the Enshrinement Queen and flee the Civic Center. One can only celebrate so much excellence in a single evening, even with all the commercial breaks to run up the score (or ad revenue) for the NFL Network. I was also famished, having received neither Gold Jacket nor dinner at the Gold Jacket Dinner, and ready to brave the fine dining void of Canton, Ohio, late on a Thursday night.
I wound up at the bar at the McKinley Grand Hotel, called Thorpe’s. Rich Eisen himself walked in and took a seat across the bar. He ordered vodka on the rocks and started bitching to the person he was sitting with about the length of the dinner he had just presided over. His companion, as it turned out, was his NFL Network colleague Marshall Faulk, the Hall of Fame running back. Like seemingly half of all living and sentient Gold Jackets, Faulk is on the payroll of either NFL Network, ESPN, or some other of the Shield’s valued broadcast partners.
I introduced myself to Eisen, the only NFL Network employee who has his own PR guy (I know this because I’d tried to reach him previously through official channels). As with Adam Schefter, Eisen was another University of Michigan alumnus. We bonded over Ann Arbor and Michigan football for a few minutes until another Hall of Famer, Warren Sapp, entered the bar and made a beeline for Faulk, Eisen, and, by proximity, me.
Sapp, a handful of a defensive tackle for the Buccaneers and Raiders, had a career checkered with “other issues” as well. He had also been part of the NFL Network’s full-employment program for Gold Jackets until he was dismissed the previous year following his arrest on suspicion of soliciting a prostitute and two counts of assault. (Unlike the Hall of Fame, the NFL Network does enforce standards of conduct. Charges against Sapp were eventually dismissed. Faulk was eventually dumped by the network, too, in his case over sexual harassment complaints.) As Sapp joined our scrum, wearing a University of Miami polo shirt, he and Eisen engaged in the following dialogue:
SAPP (pointing at Eisen): “Dude!”
EISEN (pointing at Sapp): “Dude!”
SAPP (shaking head and pointing back): “Dude?”
EISEN (nodding affirmatively): “Dude!”
Faulk and I tried to follow this battle of ideas back-and-forth, which probably looked like a pair of dogs watching a Ping-Pong match. It all seemed to be leading nowhere, except a logical place to call it a night.