Alumni in the News
Merlin J. Olsen – BS, Finance, 1962; MS, Economics, 1971
Deseret Morning News – September 24, 2006 CANTON, Ohio – Merlin Olsen was one of the heroes of my youth. He was the star of the show when my dad took me to my first football games at Utah State University.
I don't think I ever met Merlin, but when I was in college, I did get to know his younger twin sisters. A few years later, Logan renamed the park across the street from his house in his honor. That was the park where we used to go ice skating a lot when we were little, so we thought that was fun. And then there was his career on "Little House on the Prairie," which I watched faithfully for years.
Given all that, I always felt a kind of a connection to him even if I couldn't claim personal contact. So, when my sister and I found ourselves in northern Ohio earlier this year, on a path that would take us past Canton, we thought it would be fun to stop and look up Merlin in the Professional Football Hall of Fame.
I should stop here to admit that while I like football, it is not my passion-sport. That designation belongs to baseball. So, this visit was not the pilgrimage it might be for other fans of the game. But we quickly discovered that no matter what your liking of and involvement with football, there is plenty at the Hall of Fame to keep you intrigued and interested.
We could spot some of those people who were on pilgrimages – the ones who paused quietly for a few seconds by the statue of Jim Thorpe that graces the lobby; the ones who got down on one knee to explain to young sons about the greatness of their own early heroes; the ones who reverently placed a hand on the case holding the artifacts of long-ago games; the ones who whispered while they were in the darkened HOF gallery; the ones wearing the jerseys of their favorite players.
We also saw wives who were patiently led from exhibit to exhibit by enthusiastic husbands. We saw families talking about their favorite teams. We saw kids who would forever after be able to brag that they threw a football through the touchdown hole in one of the interactive displays.
Very quickly, we got caught up in the expression of excellence and pursuit of greatness that the hall represents.
And, yes, we found Merlin.
The Professional Football Hall of Fame first opened in Canton in 1963, with its trademark football-topped circular building, a second building for other exhibits and a charter class of 17 enshrinees. It didn't take long to run out of space. A third building was added in 1971, a fourth in 1978. In 1995, a $9.2 million expansion project added a turntable theater called the GameDay Stadium, brought exhibit space up to six major galleries and added an Archives & Information Center.
By far the most frequent question asked by visitors, as any member of the staff can tell you, is, why Canton?
And, as any member of the staff can and will tell you, three major reasons brought it here: First, the National Football League, originally known as the American Professional Football Association, was founded in Canton in 1920. Second, the Canton Bulldogs were an early-day force in pro football, even before there was a league. The great Jim Thorpe played his first professional football with the Bulldogs, starting in 1915. After the league was formed, the Bulldogs were the first two-time champions of the NFL, winning the titles in 1922 and 1923.
Finally (and maybe most importantly), there's the fact that the people of Canton were willing to build the hall. They launched a determined campaign to get approval from the by-then Bulldog-less NFL to let them to have it. While working closely with the NFL, the hall operates as an independent nonprofit organization.
It does a good job chronicling the history of the sport.
The first thing you see is that 7-foot statue of Thorpe. You walk up a gently sloping ramp that takes you around it and up to the first gallery, which details the first century of pro football. From there you can visit the Pro Football Today display, where the history of each of the current 32 NFL teams is presented.
The Pro Football Adventure Room tells stories of other football leagues. Constantly changing mementos of modern-day record holders are also displayed in this area. The Enshrinee Mementoes Room also contains artifacts from the game's elite players and coaches.
Moving on, you come to the Super Bowl Experience, where you can see not only artifacts from various games, you can also watch video clips of game preparations, great moments, and each and every Super Bowl game.
The GameDay Stadium Theater offers a Cinemascope feature film, "Championship Chase," which captures the "detail and passion" of the sport in a rotating turntable theater.
On the lower level, there's an Interactive Exhibit Gallery, where you can match wits with play-callers, test your trivia knowledge, take the quarterback passing challenge in the passing cage and play other games. There's a second theater that shows a different film every hour (you can even make requests if there's something you want to see). And, of course, a snack bar and a museum store.
So there's plenty to keep you occupied and interested. But there's no question that the heart of the complex is the Hall of Fame Gallery.
More than 17,000 men have passed through the National Football League. Only a select few – 235 at last count – have been inducted into the Hall of Fame. As they tell you at the entrance to the darkened hall, "history has a word for these men and the magic they made: The Greatest."
In this "space of wonderment, reverence and excitement," you can see them all. Each player has his own sculpted bronze likeness. They are grouped by their year of induction, lining the curved walls with a pretty accurate chronological record.
There are also high-tech touch-screens that let you call up biographies, film footage and other photos and information about each player. If you're not sure when your player was inducted or just how to find him, there are indexes and cross-references.
Play around on the screens a bit, and you can learn some fun things. For example, alphabetically, the players go from Herb Adderly to Jack Youngblood. Years of induction stretch from 1963 to 2006. Some 127 colleges are represented, ranging from Alabama to Wyoming. NFL franchises range from the Arizona Cardinals, also previously known as the Chicago and St. Louis Cardinals, to the Washington Redskins, aka the Boston Braves and Boston Redskins.
In this hallowed Hall of Fame, there was Merlin Olsen.
Enshrined in 1982, defensive tackle for the Los Angeles Rams from 1962-76, Olsen now belongs to the team that he "can't be cut, traded or even die off of." The boy who was born in Logan, Utah, and played at Utah State has reached the pinnacle of success in his sport. And it was a moving experience to see him there.
He's not the only one with Utah ties, of course. Steve Young, the great 49ers quarterback who first played at Brigham Young University, was inducted into the hall in 2005. So, we had to read all about him, as well. Everyone knows Steve Young, but it's still pretty special to see the bronze reminder that he's among the elite.
As far as we could tell, those were the only three with Utah ties – three out of 235, three out of 17,000. Not bad, all things considered. The three also seem to share something else: the more we read and learned, added to what we already knew, the more they seemed like they were as good off the football field as they were on it – the kind of people who are worthy of the hero classification.
For the rest, there were a lot of names we recognized, and names we didn't – too many in each category to start making lists. But taken all together, this is an impressive recounting of the sport and its people.
It's not surprising that pilgrims, passers-by and other people come from all over the world to see their heroes and their memories. It's worth the trip. Greatness, in whatever form you find it, is always worth the trip.