The Class of Football
Page 20
I said, “I couldn’t see him.”
“Well, you better start seeing him.”
Thanks for the tip. I’ll be sure to start seeing what I can’t see as soon as I see it. But it made me pause; maybe it would be good for my career if I just threw it where I thought my receiver was. I had just seen him a second ago, I knew where he was headed. Throw it—simple. Go on faith and knowledge. You can believe that I have learned that lesson many times. Trust your instinct and let it fly.
Think about it, there are fifty guys on a team with fifty different personalities, different races, religions, socioeconomic backgrounds, geographies, family histories, education, interests, trials, on and on. Most of the guys have very little in common but for their passion for football. Championship football cannot be played without a sense of love and respect for your teammates.
When the game starts, all our differences become unimportant, there becomes a sole focus on a common goal, and you embrace and appreciate the unique gifts people bring. It is amazing to see players rise to the level of expectation and work together for a common goal.
Football is the great metaphor for life. For me, it will never again be third-and-ten late in the fourth quarter down by four at Candlestick Park. Nothing in life can be like those great moments.
Y. A. Tittle
Baltimore Colts, San Francisco 49ers,
and New York Giants Quarterback
Class of 1971
Tittle threw for 33,070 yards and 242 touchdowns, including the thirty-three in 1962 and the thirty-six in 1963 that helped him become a two-time league MVP.
Presented by Giants Owner Wellington Mara
Y. A. Tittle came to the Giants in 1961 in what was to have been the twilight of an already illustrious career. Without a warning, the twilight became brighter than noontime.
Y. A. Tittle
I feel that the game of football is a game played by people. I really and truly do not completely buy the oversophisticated ideas of computers and the game being played without feeling. Thank goodness it hasn’t come to that. I think that all people that play football are motivated by other people. I can’t believe that a football player can really play when out there alone because so many people must influence his potential greatness—if you call it greatness—and I know that has happened in my life.
I also promised my wife that I wouldn’t do this, either, that I would introduce her and mention her especially as someone that has inspired me because she truly has shared my love for her with that of football. And also she also inspired me in some other ways where she reminded me so many times after so many interceptions in some of the games and asked me so many times, “Was I really color-blind?”
I know all the years that I played we never won a world championship that I so much wanted. We came close three times, but I will really settle for this because this is about the height of all my dreams.
Bob Lilly
Dallas Cowboys Defensive Tackle
Class of 1980
The foundation of great Dallas defensive units, Lilly played 196 consecutive games and in eleven Pro Bowls.
Presented by Cowboys Coach Tom Landry
I realize that you don’t recognize me without my hat, but I’m glad to be here today.
Back in 1972, I was commenting on Bob Lilly at an all-sports banquet and I made this quote: “There won’t be another Bob Lilly in my time. You are observing a man who will become a legend.”
I am still of the same opinion today because I have watched too many game films of Bob Lilly in action. He spent a whole career wading through two or three blockers to achieve his great record.
Bob Lilly
As we were riding in the great parade through Canton today prior to the ceremonies, it looked like we were going to have a downpour of rain. I looked over at Coach Landry and I said, “Coach, so many times in the history of our practices, you have called the rain off because you have a direct line upstairs.” And he called the rain off.
I just want to tell Coach Landry how much I appreciate the fact that he stayed up all night to fly in an airplane out here to introduce me today before you people. The fact that he introduced me today has a lot more meaning than you would think because there were basically three men in my life: my father, my coach in college, and Tom Landry.
This is the tough part. My father died ten years ago, my coach in college died a year ago. These were the three men who influenced me most.
I guess to sum it up, I deserve just a small part of the award today because it took teamwork as it does with everything in the world, our country, our cities, our states. They all work because of teamwork and because we have a country which allows us freedoms to choose our occupations and our professions and as the people who had the foresight to do things that were tough when they had to be done.
Bob Griese
Miami Dolphins Quarterback
Class of 1990
Griese led Miami to three AFC titles and wins in Super Bowls VII and VIII. He threw for 25,092 yards and 192 touchdowns.
Presented by Colts and Dolphins Coach Don Shula
If I ever had to define what a winner is, I could do it in two words—Bob Griese. It is no coincidence that Miami enjoyed unprecedented success during Bob’s fourteen years with the Dolphins.
He had great ability, but what set him apart was intelligence and leadership, intangibles that can’t be measured statistically except in the final score. Bob simply didn’t know what it meant to lose. He was a thinking man’s quarterback, a chess master, moving all his pieces brilliantly.
He was a genius at calling the right play at the right time. The double overtime game against Kansas City, he pulled out a play we hadn’t used the whole time, a run to Larry Csonka, our fullback, that gained thirty yards that set up the field goal that helped us get into the playoffs and eventually into the Super Bowl. But that is typical of Bob, being one of the smartest players I ever coached. But he also was one of the most unselfish.
I remember when we played the St. Louis Cardinals on Thanksgiving Day in 1977. He threw six touchdown passes in a little over three quarters of play. The record was seven. I said, “Bob, do you want to go for the record? We have a big lead.”
He said, “No, coach, let the backup quarterback play. He needs the experience in case something happens to me later on.”
Bob Griese
I was never a great talent. I mean, I couldn’t carry anybody by myself. I wasn’t a guy like Roger Staubach or Terry Bradshaw. I needed help. I needed help and I got a lot of help in Miami. I am the first to admit, give me some good players, some good players around me, and I can do some stuff that may give you some problems defensively.
If there is any lesson to be learned from me going into the NFL Hall of Fame, it is to the young people. You don’t have to be the biggest or the strongest or the fastest or the quickest or the prettiest to be successful as long as you have desire and determination and you have heart and you have some intelligence and you have some persistence and you are consistent.
And yes, maybe if you are stubborn, you can be successful and be successful in life.
Franco Harris
Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks
Running Back
Class of 1990
Harris rushed for 12,120 yards and scored one hundred touchdowns. In nineteen postseason games, he ran for 1,556 yards and was MVP of Super Bowl IX.
Presented by Steelers Wide Receiver Lynn Swann
Franco was my roommate for eight years in hotels the nights before football games. We were friends. I lived with this man and I watched the intensity.
I would talk to him at night while he would tell me how badly he wanted this championship game. When he put that helmet on and he was pacing in that locker room, walking back and forth, gathering all of his forces together to take on the opponent, everybody got charged for that. Everybody saw the intensity in Franco Harris and everybody knew if we had the chance to score, we had to do it be
cause Franco was there leading the way.
We won four Super Bowls on the shoulders and the legs of Franco Harris. I am a wide receiver, and I’m almost embarrassed to admit that the Steelers could win just on Franco’s legs and not on catching the football.
Franco Harris
I always thought, “How can I help my team? Can they count on me when it was needed?” Then you think what makes your talent come through, what makes it work, what makes you work, and the answer is to be with the right teammates.
God knows I was with the right teammates; they were great. You see, I was able to achieve goals beyond my wildest dreams because of the people who surrounded me. They brought out the best in me, they made me rise to new heights, they made me a better ball player. And at this time, I can’t find a better way than to just say thank you to my offensive linemen.
During that era, each player brought their own little piece with him to make that wonderful decade happen. Each player had his strengths and weaknesses, each his own thinking, each his own method. Each had his own. But then it was amazing. It all came together and it stayed together to forge the greatest team of all times.
My teammates were men of character with a lot of heart and soul. This was the team I belonged to, a team that will live forever. Remember living those moments? Do you realize how great those moments were? Did you savor them? God, did you see Lynn Swann in Super Bowl X, unbelievable juggling, acrobatic catch? Rocky Bleier in Super Bowl XIII leaping to catch that ball in the end zone for a touchdown. Do you remember? Do you remember John Stallworth catching that pass in Super Bowl XIV over his shoulder for that touchdown? It was great. We remember.
But while we were playing we never knew what the future would bring. We never knew at that time we were building a Steeler wing to the Hall of Fame. We never knew. But now you always will know that you saw the best. You will know it because it says so right here in Canton for all to see.
The Pittsburgh Steelers are here to stay. Remember.
Bill Walsh
San Francisco 49ers Coach
Class of 1993
With a 102–63-1 record, Walsh guided the 49ers to three Super Bowl titles—XVI, XIX, XXIII—in ten seasons.
Presented by 49ers Owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr.
What Bill achieved is not only well-known but has become the standard by which coaching careers are now judged.
His style of leadership included the amazing ability to introduce innovative techniques without destroying traditional concepts. His role as a visionary never caused him to ignore the present. Bigger was not necessarily better to Bill, nor were the strongest always the best.
He emphasized the fact that personal motivation was as important as physical gifts and that the mind and soul deserved as much attention as the body.
Bill Walsh
At one point, San Francisco was in the absolute doldrums morale wise. There had been an assassination of the mayor, and the city was in the doldrums, and the city was ridiculed by many people. Well, after three years, we had a victory parade through Market Street. We turned the corner and there were three hundred thousand people. There were older people and there were younger people. There were black people and there were white people. There were Asian people, there were rich people and rather poor people. There were people of every gender, every interest.
All of a sudden the city came together, the city became San Francisco again, the city became a world champion for the first time. The 49ers turned around an entire state and a great city. We had more impact than you would ever think on our young, our old, and the way people feel about themselves, each other, and their city. We became world champions and we continued to be world champions for four Super Bowls in the ’80s. Well, I have heard about great teams today, but we will play anybody, I will guarantee you.
People have asked, “How did you become a successful coach?” People talked about scripting the first twenty-five plays, they talked about our innovations on offense, they talked about individual players, but maybe I can relate this on behalf of our whole group today. The game is for the players. Its leaders are the players, its participants are the players, its coaches are there to help facilitate it.
Now what is leadership? Well, leadership is what developed with the San Francisco 49ers, that each man was an extension of the other. When Joe Montana threw the ball, Randy Cross was an extension of him. When Freddie Solomon caught it, he was an extension of Randy Cross, and when Randy Cross blocked he was an extension of Fred Dean who was the extension of Ronnie Lott who was the extension of Milt McColl.
So it was a chain link that was linked together by a group of men who learned to demand a lot of each other, to love each other, to care for each other, to make sacrifices for each other. They look over at each other, one group is sacrificing at that moment, the next group will go out there at the next moment.
So you will find the players who play for their families, their loved ones, that they are playing for each other, they will sacrifice, they will do anything for each other. And I take great pride in that part of it because I think the 49ers demonstrated we played for each other and we cared for each other, and that is championship football.
Chuck Noll
Pittsburgh Steelers Coach
Class of 1993
When he retired, he was the only coach to win four Super Bowl titles—IX, X, XIII, XIV.
Presented by Steelers Owner Dan Rooney
There are times, though seldom, when something happens, when everything comes together, and a group of young men become a special team; where their accomplishments give them a time in history for the way they reach success, not only being the best, but doing so with unselfish determination, making the goal together, and that happened in Pittsburgh. It was a glorious time.
A team begins with leadership. In 1969, a thirty-five-year-young coach arrived with the commitment and the ideals to be the best. He assembled players with similar ideas but had to convince them and the entire community to believe the goal was possible—not an easy achievement. The start was rocky, but he never deviated and he stuck to the basics. Small victories came, and they began to believe possibly they could be the best.
We are not here today to celebrate statistics; the accomplishments speak for themselves. We are here to consider achievement—not just the greatness of winning seasons, two hundred victories, or even four Super Bowls, or even the greatest teams ever, but the accomplishments of men reaching a level collectively to be the best they could be; men of character doing the job together.
All the people of that team belong here. They all deserve to be enshrined in Canton because he led them to greatness and they were the best.
Chuck Noll
The single most important thing we had in the Steelers in the ’70s was an ability to work together. It was called teamwork, and you know, it is tough to describe that.
You use that word and the thing that stuck out in my mind is that we had a lot of people who didn’t worry about what someone else did. If someone else was having a tough time on a particular day, they reached down and did a little more. They got the thing done. Whatever they had to do, they did to win. There was never a reason to let down.
Right now you hear about teamwork, and it is defined as fifty-fifty. That is a falsehood. There is no such thing as fifty-fifty. You do whatever you have to do as part of the team. You may have to carry somebody.
We had an offensive line when we were playing Houston that was decimated with the flu. Our offense couldn’t move the ball; we had an injury to the quarterback. It was a time when maybe our defense and our special teams could have said, “Hey, let’s fold our tent and go home.” It didn’t happen that way.
We had a bunch of guys—Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, Jack Ham, Mel Blount—they would get together and reach down and what they did was eliminate the running attack. When they tried to run the ball, there was Joe Greene in the running lane; there was Jack Lambert hammering on. When they went back to pass, Joe Greene and
L. C. Greenwood were all over Dan Pastorini. They just took the ball away from them and we had the ball in scoring territory and were able to kick field goals. That, to me, is teamwork. Another week the offense carried it while the defense struggled.
Right now we have a society of confrontation. We have male against female. We’ve got blacks against white. We’ve got labor against management. Well, you know the shame of it is, some people have made progress through confrontation.
But I can’t tell you how much you can gain, how much progress you can make by working as a team, by helping one another. You get much more done that way. And if there is anything the Steelers in the ’70s epitomized, I think it was teamwork.
Charlie Joiner
Houston Oilers, Cincinnati Bengals, and
San Diego Chargers Wide Receiver
Class of 1996
Joiner caught 750 passes for 12,146 yards and sixty-five touchdowns. At the time of his retirement he played 239 games in eighteen seasons, the most ever for a wide receiver.
This is a wonderful game that we are involved with. It is a team game. It is where forty-five to fifty men come together to perhaps form a great team.
I was fortunate enough to play on many great teams. And on those great teams, we would work together, play together, strive together, run together, do everything together to achieve one goal and that was to win on Sunday afternoons or Monday nights or whenever we played.
There was one characteristic that was very good about all these teams that I played on, especially the very good ones. We had the attitude that we would never, never quit. There is one thing that I would like to teach the youth of America. That would be to never, never quit.
Don’t let someone tell you that it can’t happen. Pursue your dreams with all the energy and experience that you have.
Tom Mack
Los Angeles Rams Guard
Class of 1999