The stars aren’t aligned

A new "For Pete's Sake" blog appears each Thursday.

If you’re like me, you have that empty feeling.

The Green Bay Packers win last Sunday put an official end to the National Football League season. Per usual, it was a spectacular season with so many great moments. But, now it’s that time of year in which there's no more football. I won’t even get into the CBA negotiations but will share I’m confident an agreement will be worked out sooner than later. In the meantime, you’ll always have the Pro Football Hall of Fame to give you a full dose of football. Like this blog that I publish each Thursday.

Today’s topic is a fact I uncovered that can possibly further explain the reason why we’re in this February funk. Bear with me on this.

We’ll be talking about the combine and draft soon. In the meantime, all of us in Canton are dissecting the new group of legends – Richard Dent, Marshall Faulk, Chris Hanburger, Les Richter, Ed Sabol, Deion Sanders, and Shannon Sharpe – who were elected to the Hall of Fame last Saturday. Similar to how stats nuts examine every aspect of every game and how draftniks share facts ad nauseam about every college prospect, we break down Hall of Famers every which way.

We can tell you that USC boasts the most Hall of Famers of any college. The state of Texas is the birthplace of more Hall of Famers than any other state. The Chicago Bears have the most Hall of Famers of any NFL team. The lists go on and on.

But, now I’m going to throw a new angle at you that you won’t find anywhere else. Perhaps it’s because my late mother dabbled in astrology but I got to thinking about whether there is any correlation to when someone is born and how likely they are to eventually find themselves enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

I started with the new class. Two of our newest enshrinees share birthdays with other football legends who already have bronze busts in Canton. Ed Sabol’s birthday on September 11 is the same day that Cowboys legendary coach Tom Landry was born.

Newly-elected defensive end Richard Dent shares his birthday with Hall of Fame tackle Gary Zimmerman. Both were born on December 13th.


So, just how unusual is it to have Hall of Famers share birthdays? Well, there are 184 days on the calendar on which a Hall of Famer was born. Sixty-one of those dates are shared my two or more Hall of Famers. The most common birthdate for a Hall of Famer is November 26. There are five all-time greats who were born on that day: Joe Guyon (1892), Jan Stenerud (1942), Art Shell (1946), Roger Wehrli (1947), and Harry Carson (1953).

As I sipped my morning coffee and charted the birthdates of the Hall of Famers, I discovered one other fact that can perhaps explain why we’re suffering the doldrums this time of year. We are in the middle of an eight-day span from Feb. 6-13 that is the longest stretch of the entire year in which no Hall of Famer was born. Clearly, the stars are not aligned this week for football!

I’m looking forward to Monday when Jim Kelly snaps this stretch as he celebrates his 51st birthday.

Oh, and one last trivial fact in case you’re scoring at home or want to win an office bet, the month of December produced the most future Hall of Famers (32).

So there you have it. With blogs like this, how can you miss football? Stay connected to us this off-season through Profootballhof.com and on most social mediums like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube by looking us up @ProFootbaHOF.