Commentary
Pro Football Hall of Fame rounds out great history
MATT KRUEGER Sports Reporter

This is the fourth in a series of columns on sports Halls of Fame. The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio looks like a giant orange squeezer with its peaked roof and circular construction.

But you won't find any pulp inside, just 100 percent pure history.

It's odd that the building celebrating a game that is so linear should be round. It rallies against the essence of the sport, which is all about marching back and forth on a rectangular grid. Walking up the circular ramp around a statue of Jim Thorpe won't make you dizzy, but the shear volume of information might.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame is far more high tech than its baseball counterpart, with a rotating stage show called Gameday Stadium that takes visitors through a season with the sights and sounds of the game. Staring at training camp, video clips of all teams play on a giant screen, while fans sit in stadium-like seats. The familiar tones of John Facenda, the voice of the NFL, sound in the dark theater as fans watch clips of players running drills, catching balls and talking with each other during water breaks. The videos are a little outdated, showing Doug Flutie as a Bill, Terrell Owens as a 49er and Bill Parcells coaching the Jets, but it all finishes with the Steelers hoisting the Lombardy Trophy after Super Bowl XL.

Walking through the Pro Football Hall of Fame is like advancing through time quickly. You start in the old days with padded leather equipment that legends like Thorpe and Red Grange wore. You move on to see jerseys of guys like Doak Walker, Ray Nitschke, Jim Brown and Jack Kemp. You can see the soccer shoe worn by kicker Garo Yepremian, Joe Namath's knee brace and the Outstanding Blocker Award given to the Buffalo Bills' "Electric Company" in 1973.

From there you move to the hallway that represents the game as it is today. Each team is represented with stats on wins, losses, Hall of Famers and other historical facts.

But what every fan wants to see is the bust room, the place where the great faces of the game live forever, where players will be remembered for how they looked when before age and illness broke them. A dark, oval-shaped area, the bust room is eerie as each bronze head is lit from underneath, creating an imposing aura around all the players. You can see "Mean" Joe Green looking serene behind his thick beard, the peaceful look on O.J. Simpson's face, the stoic glare of Jack Lambert and the deep lines in Marv Levy's forehead. Check out Billy Shaw's huge neck, Jim Kelly's arched eyebrows and Carl Eller's fierce eyes that somehow say how the former defensive end is going to tackle some poor soul out of his shoes. And did you know only three busts, Joe Gibbs, Lamar Hunt and Dan Rooney, have glasses?

Not just dedicated to the NFL, the Pro Football Hall of Fame acknowledges and honors the now extinct WFL, AFL, USFLand AAFL. In a special room, you can see the existence of teams like the New York Yankees (AFL#1), the Rochester Braves (AFL#2), the Buffalo Tigers (AFL#3) and the Tonawanda Kardex (NFL), who only played one game in 1921.

And if you go, make sure to check out the newest Hall of Famer, Buffalo's Thurman Thomas.

e-mail: mkrueger@beenews.com