This was originally going to be a baseball column. I was going to spend an hour researching stuff and reviewing all of the playoff contenders. That's going to have to wait until next week. Because I got a much better, much easier idea. I recently paid a visit to the football Hall of Fame in Canton,Ohio (nicknamed Franchise City by yours truly. Any chain restaurant or chain store can be found there. It sickens me.) The Hall of Fame is very impressive from the outside. It's a massive circular structure with a huge glass football on the top. It looks like you could fly a small airplane inside of it. You would expect that it would take days to go through (much like the baseball hall of fame). You would expect that you would learn every single important thing there is to know about football by the time you left. This was not at all the case. The football hall of fame took three hours to look through. THREE HOURS. You can't even get past the first floor of the baseball hall of fame in three hours! The most glaring problem with the football hall of fame was that it payed almost no attention to football in the 70s,80s,90s, and early 2000s. Imagine if the Baseball Hall of Fame did that. The amateur fan could walk through and learn everything there is to know about Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, etc. However, if somebody asked that fan "Who is Hank Aaron and why did he matter?", he would have no clue. Sounds stupid, right? That's what the football hall of fame did. If a fan walked in knowing absolutely nothing, he would walk out and still have no clue who Dan Marino was. This thing needs to be cleaned out. Take every single display off the shelf. Maybe even set a torch to the Tom Brady jersey (I never promised that this column wouldn't be biased.) Start from scratch. Here's what needs to happen after that.
Rebuild or add on to the existing Hall of Fame. Don't whine about lack of funding. More than half of the Hall of Fame (including the Archives and the research stations) are off limits to the public. That's how we end up with a Hall of Fame that is anywhere from 25 to 50 percent of what it should be. We need more space, otherwise it's going to end up as only a few hours again. Another two floors or even another wing/new building is necessary to make the tour last a day.
My vision for the first wing of the Hall of Fame is walking through a series of rooms with each room representing a different era. I would break the rooms down in to 1900s-1930,1930-1950,1950-1970,1970-1980,1980-1990,1990-2000,2000-Present Day. The rooms can be condensed every decade or so, but every era of football history needs to be represented. Included in these rooms should be a chronological sequence of what happened in each era and why it mattered. Things like rule changes, great games, best players, equipment and other artifacts from that time period, and other noteworthy items should all be displayed in each era's room. Also, instead of having all of the Hall of Fame plaques (football players usually get busts instead of plaques, but plaques look cooler) in one room, each player/influential figure in the Hall of Fame should be place in his respective era with a brief explanation of what he did on his plaque. These rooms would take up the entire first wing of the Hall of Fame.
The second wing of the Hall of Fame would be the theaters. The Hall of Fame already has one theater, but that's not enough. We need to get at least 7 or 8 different theaters, each showing a different NFL production. One of the theaters could show a football movie, one of them could show Road to the Super Bowl (one of the few things that I would keep about the current Hall of Fame), etc. At least two of them should be 3-D to provide viewers with the ultimate football experience. The whole purpose of the second wing is to provide a visual and auditory aspect to the whole experience. The first wing is where you go to read about football. The second wing is where you go to see football. It would also be nice to have Rich Eisen on retainer for occasional film commentary.
Wing number three should be about the evolution of football related products, interactive exhibits, memorabilia, and eating. There should be sections on the history of football video games, how Fatheads came to be, and things of that nature. The interactive exhibits should include an XBOX 360 for Madden, a football trivia contest (note that the Hall of Fame has these two things, but the current trivia contest is so outdated that when they ask you to pick a "team" to play as, they include the Houston Oilers. They also still count the Bills as a team.), and a hanging rubber tire to throw footballs through. We could also have exhibits where you can relive moments from the NFL Season. If you want, you can have Cortland Finnegan punch you in the gut, James Harrison curse you out, and things of that nature. The rest of the floor should consist of a huge sports memorabilia store and three restaurants/bars (The Postgame Spread, Up the Gut Wings, and Romeo Crennel's Old World Pizza).
Wing number four of the Hall of Fame should be about the Top 10. The Top 10 lists should span everything in football that one can make a Top 10 for. Right off the bat, I would include the following, Best Games, Best Teams, Best Players, Best at Each Position, Biggest busts, Most one-sided Trades, Most significant moments in football history, Best Bloopers, Best Records, and biggest egos. We can even have players and well-conected broadcasters vote on things like Most Likely to Commit a Felony, Craziest Guy, Worst Tipper, and Least Liked Player. Accompanying each Top 10 section should be a television screen with a "Sportscenter Top Plays" style countdown with visual evidence and accompanying highlights to back up each choice. The centerpiece of this section will be the video library. At least 15 of those booths that they have in arcades where you step in and get your picture taken should be set up in the middle of the floor with an HD viewing screen. Visitors would have access to a touch-screen that could navigate NFL history and find any highlight from any game. I'm not resting until this happens.
So there is your Hall of Fame. The four wings of the Hall cover everything that one would ever really need to know about this great sport. The only other thing that I would include is occasional guest speakers and ex-football players. I'm open to other improvements as well. Specialized rooms that can be rented for fantasy drafts, a section devoted to influential non-players, a mock broadcast booth where you can announce great moments in NFL History, a huge artifact room with most of the archives on display (as well as an Unintentional Comedy Artifact Room including things like Cris Carter's muscle shirt that he wore on air last year, anything from the Miami-Buffalo game in Canada, an autographed football from the Eagles-Bengals tie game, and the camera that was found in the Meadowlands after Jets-Pats) and a video game based on NBA All-Star Weekend in Vegas (You lose if you get shot by Pacman Jones) are all projects that I would be open to for the future. Otherwise, there is nothing wrong with the Hall of Fame model that I have just created. All of the essential knowledge of football (and then some) can be absorbed. You would definitely spend more than a day here. And you would always walk out saying "That was awesome." One can only dream.
Rebuild or add on to the existing Hall of Fame. Don't whine about lack of funding. More than half of the Hall of Fame (including the Archives and the research stations) are off limits to the public. That's how we end up with a Hall of Fame that is anywhere from 25 to 50 percent of what it should be. We need more space, otherwise it's going to end up as only a few hours again. Another two floors or even another wing/new building is necessary to make the tour last a day.
My vision for the first wing of the Hall of Fame is walking through a series of rooms with each room representing a different era. I would break the rooms down in to 1900s-1930,1930-1950,1950-1970,1970-1980,1980-1990,1990-2000,2000-Present Day. The rooms can be condensed every decade or so, but every era of football history needs to be represented. Included in these rooms should be a chronological sequence of what happened in each era and why it mattered. Things like rule changes, great games, best players, equipment and other artifacts from that time period, and other noteworthy items should all be displayed in each era's room. Also, instead of having all of the Hall of Fame plaques (football players usually get busts instead of plaques, but plaques look cooler) in one room, each player/influential figure in the Hall of Fame should be place in his respective era with a brief explanation of what he did on his plaque. These rooms would take up the entire first wing of the Hall of Fame.
The second wing of the Hall of Fame would be the theaters. The Hall of Fame already has one theater, but that's not enough. We need to get at least 7 or 8 different theaters, each showing a different NFL production. One of the theaters could show a football movie, one of them could show Road to the Super Bowl (one of the few things that I would keep about the current Hall of Fame), etc. At least two of them should be 3-D to provide viewers with the ultimate football experience. The whole purpose of the second wing is to provide a visual and auditory aspect to the whole experience. The first wing is where you go to read about football. The second wing is where you go to see football. It would also be nice to have Rich Eisen on retainer for occasional film commentary.
Wing number three should be about the evolution of football related products, interactive exhibits, memorabilia, and eating. There should be sections on the history of football video games, how Fatheads came to be, and things of that nature. The interactive exhibits should include an XBOX 360 for Madden, a football trivia contest (note that the Hall of Fame has these two things, but the current trivia contest is so outdated that when they ask you to pick a "team" to play as, they include the Houston Oilers. They also still count the Bills as a team.), and a hanging rubber tire to throw footballs through. We could also have exhibits where you can relive moments from the NFL Season. If you want, you can have Cortland Finnegan punch you in the gut, James Harrison curse you out, and things of that nature. The rest of the floor should consist of a huge sports memorabilia store and three restaurants/bars (The Postgame Spread, Up the Gut Wings, and Romeo Crennel's Old World Pizza).
Wing number four of the Hall of Fame should be about the Top 10. The Top 10 lists should span everything in football that one can make a Top 10 for. Right off the bat, I would include the following, Best Games, Best Teams, Best Players, Best at Each Position, Biggest busts, Most one-sided Trades, Most significant moments in football history, Best Bloopers, Best Records, and biggest egos. We can even have players and well-conected broadcasters vote on things like Most Likely to Commit a Felony, Craziest Guy, Worst Tipper, and Least Liked Player. Accompanying each Top 10 section should be a television screen with a "Sportscenter Top Plays" style countdown with visual evidence and accompanying highlights to back up each choice. The centerpiece of this section will be the video library. At least 15 of those booths that they have in arcades where you step in and get your picture taken should be set up in the middle of the floor with an HD viewing screen. Visitors would have access to a touch-screen that could navigate NFL history and find any highlight from any game. I'm not resting until this happens.
So there is your Hall of Fame. The four wings of the Hall cover everything that one would ever really need to know about this great sport. The only other thing that I would include is occasional guest speakers and ex-football players. I'm open to other improvements as well. Specialized rooms that can be rented for fantasy drafts, a section devoted to influential non-players, a mock broadcast booth where you can announce great moments in NFL History, a huge artifact room with most of the archives on display (as well as an Unintentional Comedy Artifact Room including things like Cris Carter's muscle shirt that he wore on air last year, anything from the Miami-Buffalo game in Canada, an autographed football from the Eagles-Bengals tie game, and the camera that was found in the Meadowlands after Jets-Pats) and a video game based on NBA All-Star Weekend in Vegas (You lose if you get shot by Pacman Jones) are all projects that I would be open to for the future. Otherwise, there is nothing wrong with the Hall of Fame model that I have just created. All of the essential knowledge of football (and then some) can be absorbed. You would definitely spend more than a day here. And you would always walk out saying "That was awesome." One can only dream.
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