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The Pro Football Hall in Canton, Ohio, joins the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Ind., in paying homage to what many consider the sport that has replaced baseball as America's pastime.
Like the pro hall in Canton, the college hall has supplemented the aisles of artifacts and corridors of commentary with hands-on games to test both one's cerebral and physical talents.
It can be humbling. Try kicking a 25-yard field goal in South Bend's College Football Hall of Fame. I blame my bad knee, decimated by middle age and years of casual running in my younger days. That's my excuse, anyway.
At both halls, one can practice his or her passing, trying to pinpoint a spiral into the outstretched arms of a cardboard-cutout wide receiver. And in the college hall of fame, there is a chance to run like a freight train into a tackling dummy, and test one's vertical leap, agility, balance, upper body strength and other physical talents in a gallery called the fitness room.
Yet all this activity is not to say that armchair fans cannot simply watch. In the College Football Hall of Fame, one can stand in front of a television monitor tucked inside a model of an 8-foot-high football on steroids to see highlights of what have been deemed the college games of the year from 2004 to 2008. Some selections are debatable, but it's hard to argue with Appalachian State's 2007 mind-numbing 34-32 upset of Big Ten stalwart Michigan, thanks to two blocked field goal attempts.
Exhibits also take visitors back a century, when helmets were leather and offenses consisted of bulldozing plays such as the flying wedge. One reads that the NCAA was founded after President Theodore Roosevelt met with football officials in 1906, to establish some oversight and cut down on the severe injuries -- and deaths -- that resulted from early games.
Within a decade, college football was part of the American social psyche. The Rose Bowl already existed, although it was not yet called the Rose Bowl; a posted copy of the New Year's Day 1916 program tags the game the "Tournament of Roses Midwinter Floral Pageant Football, featuring Brown University vs. State College of Washington."
This being the shrine to the college game, odes to pageantry not found in the pro game dominate museum space. At the push of a button you can hear your alma mater's fight song. Or grab a pair of pompoms and play the role of cheerleader. Note: It was not until 1927 that Marquette University named its first female cheerleader, student Margaret Herrick.
Posters tell the stories behind college mascots, like that of the 1,500-pound Texas longhorn Bevo, introduced in 1916 during a game against Texas A&M. (PETA members may want to skip the next sentence.) Bevo was cooked and served as the main course at the 1920 championship dinner. And Notre Dame's fighting leprechaun logo was first used not as a compliment, but by opponents to taunt the team.
Best summing up the spirit of college football is a 43-foot-tall sculpture representing everything to do with a college athlete's life, including textbooks, soda cups, pizza boxes, footballs and more footballs, helmets and life-size cast figures of players in action.
The College Football Hall of Fame's 1,059 members are enshrined on two groups of relief sculptures. Notre Dame has the most enshrinees with 49. Next are Michigan with 34 and USC with 31.
In Canton's Pro Football Hall of Fame, the 260 inductees are noted by bronze busts. Sit at a touch screen to read a nutshell bio and watch filmed highlights of each member in action. Pro football technically dates to 1892, when one Pudge Heffelfinger signed a contract to play in a grudge game for $500. But nearly three decades passed after Hefflefinger's signing before the National Football League was founded in a Hupmobile automobile salesroom in Canton in 1920.
The game might have been organized, but in its first few years its following was esoteric. Pick up a telephone headset and listen to the voice of one of the game's earliest superstars, Red Grange, telling of the time he introduced a young George Halas to sitting President Calvin Coolidge. Halas, said Grange to the president, is "with the Chicago Bears." The president replied: "I'm glad to know you. I've always liked animal acts."
The game's Neanderthal days are represented by a soccer-like football dating to the late 1890s and a trophy football made in 1925 from a solid chunk of anthracite coal. It was awarded by the NFL champion Pottsville (Penn.) Maroons to themselves because they contended they, not the Chicago Cardinals (the ancestor of today's Arizona Cardinals), were league champions, despite the fact that the Cardinals were awarded the contested title.
The modern game is celebrated in the gallery titled "Teams of the NFL." Every present-day team has its own display, and one can see who has the largest following by the crowds gathered around it: Seattle Seahawks, I'm sure your day will come.
The pro hall recently opened The Lamar Hunt Super Bowl Gallery. Every Super Bowl is now commemorated with a kiosk featuring a capsule video summary. Exhibited artifacts include the iconic (Bart Starr's jersey from Super Bowl I) and the obscure (the pen President Lyndon Johnson used in 1966 to sign into law the rider approving the merger of the National Football League and the American Football League).
The pro hall also recently renovated its Moments, Memories & Mementoes Gallery, in which high-tech meets archives and artifacts, where helmets, shoes and footballs with connections to greats such as Bronko Nagurski, George Blanda, Jack Lambert and Eric Dickerson are underscored with dramatic illumination, seemingly floating in space, while hands-on interactive units permit visitors to connect the relics with the men behind them.
Michael Schuman is a freelance travel writer in New Hampshire.
If you go
Pro Football Hall of Fame
Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Labor Day through Memorial Day, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. the rest of the year. Closed Christmas.
Admission: $20 adults, $16 ages 62 and older, $14 ages 6 to 14.
Info: (330) 456-8207 or www.profootballhof.com
College Football Hall of Fame
Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays Memorial Day through Thanksgiving. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily the rest of the year, longer hours on Notre Dame home football weekends; closed Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day.
Admission: $12 adults, $9 ages 62 and over, $8 students (age 13- college), $5 ages 5-12.
Info: (800) 440-3263, (574) 235-9999. http://collegefootball.org
Note: Some may have read that the College Football Hall of Fame will be leaving South Bend for a new home in Atlanta. That will not happen until 2012 at the earliest, and the current hall is still open in all its glory.
