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Part of my job here at the Pro Football Hall of Fame is to seek out player equipment whenever a record is broken or a great moment occurs. Right now I’m working on collecting several pink things from this weekend. As you know many NFL players wore pink during Week 4 games to promote Breast Cancer Awareness month. I hope to get a couple of pieces of game used pink mementos to commemorate the great way the NFL brought attention to Breast Cancer.

Probably everyone who reads this knows someone who has battled cancer. Right now you can help shop for a cure by buying merchandise on our website. Twenty percent of all sales on this merchandise in our online store now through October 9 will go to the Susan G. Komen Fight for a Cure foundation.

You can also be sure to look for a story soon on the website about some of the mementos we received and a display here at the Hall of Fame commemorating how the NFL went “pink” for a weekend to fight Breast cancer.

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Hall of Fame at a museum near you

The Pro Football Hall of Fame is always looking for ways to reach out to other communities and give fans a taste of Canton.  We are reaching internationally on October 25 for the 2009 NFL International Series that is the third annual regular season NFL game played at Wembley Stadium in London. 

This year’s game is between the New England Patriots and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and will feature a Pregame Fan Tailgate party with a special exhibit from the Pro Football Hall of Fame on the history professional football.  The exhibit will feature artifacts from all decades of professional football ranging from a nose guard from the turn of the 19th Century to Jim Brown’s jersey from the ‘60s to more recently pieces of memorabilia like Tom Brady’s 2007 uniform.

This is the first time that the Pro Football Hall of Fame has had an exhibit overseas.   We’ve had exhibits in Canada but never outside North America.  Here’s some more information on the event: 
 

http://www.nfluk.com/series/tailgate2009IS_090809.html
 

Yours truly will be setting up the exhibit.  Wish me luck. I’ve never been to Europe.  Any suggestions on what to see would be greatly appreciated.  Preferably, I’m interested in what to see after 5:00 PM because I’ll be working hard for the NFL during the day.

I know many of you are not able to travel all the way to London, England to get a taste of Canton but there is a very good possibility that you could have a Pro Football Hall of Fame exhibit right in your home town.  Recently, we launched our new traveling exhibit program and right now our traveling exhibit “Pro Football and the American Spirit” is available to museums around the country. 

The exhibit chronicles how the NFL has responded in times of national crisis and honors all the former NFL players who have served in conflicts for our country’s military. (Here's our online exhibit that shares a bit of the story).  The exhibit begins with World War II and all the hundreds of players who served in the military at that time.  One interesting side note to World War II that few people realize was that Pearl Harbor was attacked on an NFL Sunday (Sunday, December 7, 1941).  Featured in the World War II section is a New York Giants against the Brooklyn Dodgers program from that infamous day in our nation’s history.  The exhibit includes artifacts from such players as Hall of Famer Art Donovan who served in World War II, Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins quarterback Eddie LeBaron who served in Korea, and Pittsburgh Steelers fullback Rocky Bleier who served in Vietnam.

The exhibit concludes with Pat Tillman’s Arizona Cardinals jersey and his Army Ranger Jacket.  As many of you know, Tillman turned down a chance to renew a lucrative contract with the Cardinals in 2002 in order to serve his country in the Army.  He later lost his life in Afghanistan.  The “Pro Football and the American Spirit” exhibit is one of the most impactful and moving exhibits we have ever had at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.  It debuted last year in our traveling exhibit gallery and is now available for other museums.  We hope to have a new traveling exhibit debut at the Pro Football Hall of Fame each year and then travel that exhibit from five to six years around the country. 

If you are interested in having the “Pro Football and the American Spirit” exhibit come to your town, contact your local museum and tell them about it.   Tell them you don’t want to travel all the way to London to see a Hall of Fame traveling exhibit.  The exhibit is a great way for museums to honor our nation’s veterans.  For more information on the exhibit click on this link:  http://www.profootballhof.com/AmericanSpirit.aspx
 

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4:15 p.m.

We opened a new state-of-the-art exhibit gallery during Hall of Fame Weekend. Titled The Lamar Hunt Super Bowl Gallery the exhibit provides visitors with a complete history on America’s unofficial holiday, the Super Bowl. The gallery was made possible through the generous support of the Lamar Hunt family. It was Lamar Hunt, owner and founder of the Kansas City Chiefs, who coined the term “Super Bowl” and also helped broker the merger between the NFL and the AFL.

The opening of the gallery gave us the opportunity to seek out new objects for the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s collection. One of the first objects a visitor sees when entering the gallery is the pen used by President Lyndon Johnson to federally authorize the merger of the AFL and the NFL. This pen was given by President Johnson to former NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle. The pen has been in the Rozelle family for years. Anne Marie Bratton, Rozelle’s daughter, managed to save the pen and provided it to Hall of Fame for display. The pen is one of a handful of Presidential artifacts in the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s collection.

I also wanted to mention two other historic artifacts that arrived recently at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The arrival of the mementos was kind of overshadowed by the hoopla of the Hall of Fame weekend. We received Washington Redskins quarterback Doug Williams’ jersey and helmet he wore during his MVP performance in Super Bowl XXII. The helmet was appropriately placed on display in The Lamar Hunt Super Bowl Gallery. We hope to include the jersey in an exhibit we are developing on the African American Experience in Pro Football.

Doug offered the helmet and jersey to us after serving as a guest panelist in our Black History Month program this past February. In his honor during the month of February we displayed his Tampa Bay Buccaneers helmet from 1978 that featured an unusually large face mask to protect his broken jaw. Yes, Doug Williams played much of the ‘78 season with a broken jaw as he lead the expansion Buccaneers out of the wilderness of a 2-26 start to their existence. The following season Williams led the Buccaneers to the 1979 NFC Championship Game.

After jumping to the USFL in 1983, Williams returned to the NFL in 1986 with the Redskins and led the team into the 1987 playoffs. The ‘87 season did not start off well for Williams or the NFL. The season was initially marred by a players strike and if you remember was only a 15-game regular season. Williams battled Jay Schroeder for the starting quarterback job throughout the season.

Other fond memories I have from that season was the New Orleans Saints finishing the season at 12-3 and earning their first playoff appearance and the wacky twist and turns of the 1987 playoffs. The Saints despite their impressive record finished second to the 49ers in the NFC West and faced the Minnesota Vikings in the Wild Card Game. The Vikings had eeked into the playoffs with an 8-7 record. However the Vikings rose to the occasion and not only upset the upstart Saints but trounced them 44-10.

Throughout the regular season that year it seemed as though the 49ers were destined to run over the whole league after finishing 13-2. The 49ers led the NFL in scoring offense and finished third in scoring defense. However in the divisional playoffs the 49ers met the upset minded Vikings. Another former USFL player, Anthony Carter had the game of his NFL career for the Vikings against the 49ers. He caught 10 passes for what was then NFL postseason record of 227 yards in the Vikings 36-24 victory.

The Redskins scored a minor upset of their own in the divisional playoff game by defeating the Chicago Bears in Soldier Field 21-17. The deciding play of the game was a 52-yard punt return by Hall of Famer Darrell Green who pulled a stomach muscle during the play. The Redskins victory set up a battle of two Cinderellas (Washington and Minnesota) in the NFC Championship Game. The game did not disappoint. Williams shined in the game by throwing two touchdowns the second of which to Gary Clark gave the Redskins a late 17-10 lead. On the following drive Wade Wilson heroically led the Vikings to the Redskins 6-yard-line only to have his fourth down pass to Darrin Nelson fall incomplete to end the game.

The victory set up Williams historic game in Super Bowl XXII against the Denver Broncos. No team in NFL history had started an African-American at quarterback in the Super Bowl. In fact few African Americans had been given the chance to play quarterback in the NFL. While the Redskins journey to the Super Bowl seemed to be a fairy tale, the Broncos had been the most dominant team in the AFC all year although they had just survived the Cleveland Browns in the AFC Championship Game 38-33 (I’ll spare Browns fans from any other details).

If you remember the Broncos jumped out to an early 10-0 lead in the first quarter against the Redskins only to be shell shocked by 35 points scored by Washington in the second quarter. Williams threw four touchdowns in the 35-point explosion and was named game MVP. Williams performance broke down the final barriers of African Americans on the field and capped off a fabulous postseason that erased the negativity of the player strike earlier that season.

Since then the NFL has enjoyed over 20 years of labor peace and African Americans have enjoyed equal opportunity on the field. Who knew a jersey and helmet could represent so much.
 

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11:15 a.m. ET

Here at the Pro Football Hall of Fame, one of the important aspects of our mission is “to educate the public regarding the origin, development and growth of professional football as an important part of American culture” The same undertaking is set in the Archives and Information Center of the Hall of Fame.

When we received permission from Canton City Schools to begin a special tour of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Field at Fawcett Stadium, we felt it was necessary to be able to teach the public about the past of the historic stadium. We were already aware of certain details which pertained to the stadium’s beginnings. For example, the stadium was named after former Canton Board of Education member and athlete John A. Fawcett who died a few years before the completion of the stadium. We also knew the stadium was built between 1937-1939 and the first game was played sometime during that time period. We also knew Hall of Famers Marion Motley and Paul Brown played and coached on the field in its early years.

However, there were some facts that were sketchy. Did Brown coach against Motley? Who scored the first touchdown? When exactly was the first game played? These are questions which we felt were important to research in order to educate the visitors of the Hall of Fame. We also go to great lengths to confirm facts. One such piece of information that was continually repeated around here was that Motley scored the first TD in the stadium history. We went through our files and couldn’t confirm that. As it turned out that was a bit of “local folklore” but not too far off. Motley didn’t actually score the stadium’s first touchdown but was involved on the play (more on that later).

These were questions that could only be answered by referring to the best primary sources present during the earlier part of the 20th century, the newspapers. We headed over to the Stark County Public Library and began to research information on Fawcett Stadium. We started by using the book, 103 Days in November as a guide. It was written by a local man Charles E. Bowersox about the history of Canton McKinley High School football. From there, we began to look through the library’s archived (Canton) Repository files.

Hidden in the growing news stories about Adolf Hitler and the years immediately prior to the beginning of World War II were sports stories about the Canton high school McKinley Bulldogs and their new stadium known as “Fawcett Stadium.” The Repository illustrated the beginning of the stadium. We found out that the construction of the stadium was in fact begun in 1937 and not completed until 1939 as part of a WPA works project and cost nearly $500,000. The Canton McKinley Bulldogs had previously played its games at Canton Lehman High School. However, in 1938, one year before its completion, Fawcett Stadium housed the Bulldogs in its regular season games.

The first game was played on September 17, 1938 before a crowd of nearly 10,000 spectators. The stadium had only completed the north stands and temporary west stand were constructed while people overflowed onto a nearby hill. The Bulldogs faced Lehman High School and were victorious 48-6 on a spectacular performance by a future star. Marion Motley was a very large player for his day. In 1937, he had been a lineman, but in 1938 he had the opportunity to play running back and he was not a disappointment. In that first inaugural game, he ran for four touchdowns and kicked three extra points. He also helped score the first ever touchdown at Fawcett Stadium on a halfback pass to wide receiver Nick Roman. As you may know, Marion went on to help reintegrate professional football in 1946 when he signed with the Cleveland Browns and began his Hall of Fame career.

Although Fawcett Stadium’s first year of seeing action was in 1938, it was not officially dedicated until September 23, 1939. This was the second week of the 1939 campaign and the McKinley Bulldogs defeated Lehman again by a score of 31-0. A near capacity crowd of 13,000 fans (the original stadium held 15,000) witnessed the dedication and the game.
The other piece of information that we had conflicting information about was whether Brown coached against Motley at Fawcett Stadium. Through our research we can now say that did not happen.

Paul Brown played high school football in Massillon, which is a town that borders Canton.  Brown later went on to be head coach of his high school Alma Mater better known in these parts as the Massillon Tigers. The annual McKinley Bulldogs-Massillon Tigers game played in Canton in 1937 and Coach Brown did face Motley; however, that game was still played at Lehman High School. In Motley’s final high school year, 1938, the game was played in Massillon.

Nevertheless, it is fascinating that Coach Brown is the only man to coach at Fawcett Stadium in high school and the National Football League. He coached his Tigers in 1939 in the year following Motley’s departure and was victorious against the Bulldogs at Fawcett Stadium and nearly 40 years later, in 1975, he coached the Cincinnati Bengals in the Hall of Fame Game but lost to the Washington Redskins 17-9.

The new information we have obtained has helped to add correct historical facts to our promotional information on Fawcett Stadium and the Pro Football Hall of Fame game series. This research fulfills part of our mission to educate the public and we believe the history of Fawcett Stadium is an important piece to the history of American football.

I’d like to end by thanking our Pro Football Collections Intern, Andrew Linden, who contributed greatly to this piece.

Brown, Paul, Motley, Marion

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