“In my opinion, baseball is America’s pastime, but football is truly America’s passion.” 
-Howie Long 

Amen, Howie Long.  And if football is the passion of the nation, or as Hunter S. Thompson said, its religion, then Canton, Ohio is Mecca.  Now, I’ve been looking forward to the Pro Football Hall of Fame since day one, but if I had known when we started our trip just how amazing it was, I may have argued for skipping the rest of the country, and staying there for a month.  Really, the idea that there are football fans who haven’t been there is crazy: the NFL should give stipends to every fan so they can go and visit.  I’ll say it one more way and then leave it alone: if you’re planning on seeing America, skip it and go to the Hall of Fame.

Part of why I’m so hyped on the Hall is that, once again, my wife and I had timing on our side.  The night before our trip down to Canton from Cleveland (where “Rise” and Lebron posters were ubiquitous and the tide of anti-Celtic sentiment was even stronger than in the Hawks-loving car I’m driving), I checked the Hall’s website, to find that Saturday May 10, the day we were going to be there, they were opening two brand new exhibits, which cost over three and a half million dollars to build. 

So the next morning we arrived early, expecting to see a long line, and instead finding a handful of cars in the parking lot and two very cheerful old ladies at the entrance.  When they heard we were from California, and hadn’t planned to show up on unveiling day but rather stumbled into it, they smiled and one of them said, “We’re so happy you’re here.”  They were so glad we were there?  It was hard not to take off running through the place.  Then they ushered us inside, where we were handed a free gift bag with a commemorative newspaper, a free commemorative Hall of Fame guidebook, and a trivia card to fill out in order to enter into a contest for tons of prizes.  Upstairs, the Cleveland Sports Radio Show was broadcasting live, its two hosts cheerily calling to fans as they walked by. 

The inside…the inside of the building is absolutely overwhelming.  It’s hard for me not to write a ten thousand word catalog of everything there, but that would be boring to read, and it would deprive you of the opportunity to go be surprised.  So I’ll just give a few quick hits.  First, I’ve been to a lot of historical Museums and Centers and Memorials and yes, even a few Centres, but I’ve never been in a facility like the Hall.  The exhibit design, especially the two new ones, is flawless, breathtaking, and an absolute orgy of football history.  An example of the benefits of the multi-million dollar modernization: the bust room, which houses the busts of every Hall of Fame inductee, has all those famous bronzed heads, backlit on smooth clear glass to give them an ethereal effect.  In the center of the room are six plasma touch screens that you can stand in front of and navigate to the profile of every player in the room.  On their profile you can read a bio, press a button to locate the bust, and watch video highlights.  Yeah, it’s like that.

In addition to being well put-together, the exhibits contain countless must-sees: the Lombardi trophy, every Super Bowl ring, the jersey Bart Starr wore in the first Super Bowl, a player bench from Lombardi’s last game, historic uniforms from Favre, Montana, Young, Rice, Barry Sanders, Peyton Manning, John Elway, etc etc etc.  I know I said I wouldn’t go on, but believe me, I’m only scratching the surface.  What’s more, the exhibits themselves (though you can easily spend a whole day looking at them) barely scratch the surface of what the Hall actually has.  Of the full collection (including the massive and private Archives beneath the Hall), only about 5% is on display. 

Fortunately, because it was a special day, we got a special presentation in a conference room of some of the archived material, including part of the roof of the Silverdome that blew off, the original quarterback radio transmitter (from the fifties, before the days of the green dot), and other priceless gems; what’s amazing is that the entire collection was donated, by players, teams, and fans.  The Hall has never purchased a single piece of merchandise.

There are other can’t-misses, including a Gameday Theater, an NFL Films Theater (yes, really, and they take requests), and a set-up where you can play a sneak peak of the upcoming season’s Madden game, but I’m already running out of space, so I’m going to wrap up.  I’ve tried to tie all these columns back to Long Beach, and I was surprised to find that it’s relatively easy to do so even here.  A lot of people have asked why Canton has the Hall.  Well, there are some loose historical facts, with Canton serving as the home of one of the original pro football teams, but really it all comes down to a headline on the Sports page of a 1956 edition of the Canton Repository (the same newspaper giving out commemorative editions), a headline which read: “Pro Football Needs Hall of Fame and Logical Site is Here.”  The article was an impassioned plea to the community to take pride in itself for once, step up, and make it happen.  Immediately money was raised, a perfect presentation was assembled, and the town came together.  A year later, they broke ground, and put Canton, Ohio, on the map.  I’m hoping that as you read more and more of LBPostSports.com, that spirit of pride—and the benefits it can bring—look more and more familiar to you.