THE SCENE DURING RICHARD DENT'S INDUCTION SPEECH
Two years ago, Mary and I had a blast during the Enshrinement Festival in Canton at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Between talking to Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus, touring the hall and getting invites to Fred Dean's post-induction party, the day could not have been more fun.
But as much fun as we had, we made a pledge that knew we were not going to return until Richard Dent's induction into the hall.
It was long-overdue and much deserved and the politics of the hall – the Chicago Bears already have more players in the hall than any other team – were maddening.
So, in February, when the announcement was made, the very first thing I did was to secure a hotel room. They are hard to get and two years ago we stayed 15 miles out of town.
Then came the six-month wait.
The Bears were going to play the Rams in the Hall of Fame Game. But, wait, there's a lockout. The two sides are getting together! No they aren't. The season will happen without any cancelations. Wait, they canceled the Hall of Fame Game.
Sure. The only casualty of the lockout was the only Bears game an hour and 10 minutes from my house.
Undeterred, we have looked forward to this weekend.
We hit the grounds at about 11 a.m. Saturday and the next nine-and-a-half hours were a trip to, as Marshall Faulk would later decree, football heaven.
Now, there's no question the crowd was down significantly from our last visit. Two years ago, it was so crowded you could barely move around the out-door area between the shopping areas and the autograph tents. This year, there was plenty of space.
We estimated that the on-ground crowd was down 60 percent during the day Saturday.
Now, there was one unexpected addition: A Bud Light sports bar with seats, fans, the NFL Network on great TV screens… The best part of the bar? Football fans. We never stopped by to cool off without engaging fans in football talk. There were tons of Denver Broncos fans there and long debates on Tebow vs. Orton vs. Cutler.
I would divide the crowd into four fandoms: Bears fans, Broncos fans, St. Louis Rams fans and everyone else.
The Bud Light bar was next to the Mounted Memories autograph tent so it was also a place to catch Mean Joe Greene, Eric Dickerson and others circulating.
We had four goals for the day: Get Butkus to sign a HoF ball, hit the celebration dinner, run into Richard Dent and hit the induction ceremony.
The Butkus signing was at noon and was steep at $89. But he was so engaging two years ago and I figured this time I would stream him on Twitter.
Well…
I guess if I was 68 and had to set it in a tent a sign next to Deion Sanders for a coupe of hours, I might get grumpy, too. Dick wasn't engaging folks. Just signing and moving them along… That was kind of disappointing since he is a hero of mine and was my first-ever autograph back in 1969.
He was far more engaging even back then.
From there it was off to the Hall Mall, the tented shopping plazas that are filled with the stuff of dreams.
The first stop was Dent's booth, which was selling items to fund his Make a Dent Foundation. The staff there mentioned that Richard himself might make an afternoon appearance.
That was music to our Bears fans ears!
We spent a lot of time going through a lot of cool stuff in the shopping area. We settled on a plaque of the 2011 HoF class that had a space for our induction ticket stub, two awesome T-shirts that listed every Bears enshrinee and some football cards for me. During our shopping excursion, we met more football fans and talked and debated more football.
One Dallas fan compared his hatred for the Pittsburgh Steelers with our hatred of that team from Wisconsin that cheats all of the time.
From there we hung outside of the Hall a bit, I recharged my iPhone and then we started to make our way to the former autograph tent which was not converted into the 4-6 p.m. dinner tent.
As we walked past the shopping area, we heard a fan say "He's coming!"
Mary instinctively jumped into a very short line and I went in to get the news: Dent was dropping by for a limited time and would sign for a donation to his foundation.
Which is how we got two Hall of Famers on the same ball that day.
Richard was not only gracious – and this was just four hours or so before he'd hit the stage for the big speech – but seemed relaxed. He shook the hands of fans, posed for pictures, and signed his big, beautiful autograph. He was clearly enjoying the moment
So, he signed my ball, gave a shout out to the Bears Nation, shook my hand and we were on our way with our prize.
The next stop was the fan bash dinner, and here was the biggest miscue of the day by the hall folks. Two years ago, the menu had burgers and ribs and glasses of Miller Lite flowed free, This year? Fancy fare like prime rib and stuffed oysters and aluminum bottles of beer that you had to wait in line for. Worse, the space was smaller – probably in anticipation of the smaller crowd – and someone got the bright idea to have a LOUD deejay and LOUD music so that you could barely talk to the person next to you.
So, it was hard to get food or drink, you could not move, there was no place to eat (if you put your dish on the bar to eat you got kicked off by a bartender). Gone was the football talk from two years ago.
Then, it began to pour rain. Hard. So you were trapped in there, literally, for two hours.
But, on queue, the rain ended. We headed to the stadium (more confusion with security at odds with itself on the best way to enter gates 7 and 8) and the storm seemed to have cut the humidity a bit.
We were early, but the stadium was playing a long, NFL Films tribute to Ed Sabol and if you have not seen it, it was tremendous. A portion of it was used in his son's Steve Sabol introduction of Ed, but the entire film is a treat.
Sabol went first, and then Dent. As Richard spoke, a Goodyear blimp made its way over the stadium and it was a picture perfect setting. Richard did not evoke the emotions of Shannon Sharpe or Sanders, but he did thank a lot of people and reminded us all that even a skinny kid who as the eighth-round draft pick out of a small school could achieve greatness.
I really just sat there and soaked it all in. It was beautiful night and I was so proud of Richard and so proud to be a Bears fan.
I loved his shout-outs to Walter Payton, Steve McMichael, Dan Hampton, et al. I wondered where Mike Singletary was.
Dent was followed by Da Coach, Mike Ditka, on the big screen sharing his congrats.
For us, the ending of the speech marked the beginning of our next phase of our HoF day: Get into the hotel, peel off our sweaty/rainy clothes, get a nice shower, order pizza and watch the rest of the show on TV.
It had been a long, memorable day. And we enjoyed every minute of it.
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