Damon Runyon
Lancaster New Era/December 22, 1936
MIAMI, Fla., Dec. 22.—While baseball is building up its diamond hall of fame, what about a gridiron hall of fame to commemorate the noble football warriors?
Baseball is placing bronze plaques of its immortals in niches at Cooperstown, N. Y., the birthplace of what was our national pastime until football nudged it a little to one side.
Football, we think, should rear a lean-to at New Brunswick, N.J., and there install similar plates to the memory of the lads who practically died for dear old alma maters.
We say New Brunswick, N.J. because that is as close as we can come to the birthplace of intercollegiate football in this country. It was also the seat of a celebrated murder case, but that has nothing to do with our suggestion. Neither has the fact that the case was made something of a political football.
Yale is supposed to have monkeyed to some extent with a form of football as far back as 1806, but not until 1865 was the matter taken up more seriously. Rutgers and Princeton dabbled with the business to some extent that year, and fixed up a form of the game that year, and on November 13, 1869, they played the first game, Rutgers winning, 6 goals to 4.
They repeated the performance on November 20, and this time Princeton won, 6 to 0, and there we have our birthplace all ready for us.
To Be Picked By Scribes
A Rutgers-Princeton committee ought to take up the gridiron hall of fame idea, and enlist the co-operation of New Brunswick, N.J., a right lively little town, if you are giving any thought to towns. It might be a good scheme to cop a few ideas from the baseball plan as a starter, the best of these ideas being the selection of the inmates of the hall of fame by newspaper writers.
In the baseball case, it is the baseball writers who do the selecting. Our football hall could be filled up by the gridiron scribes. The members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America are now balloting on ten baseball immortals no longer active who have played since 1900, and it requires a 75 per cent vote for a selection.
Last year, the baseball hall was started with Tyrus Raymond Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson. It is to be added to every year. The first plaques are now ready for installation. They are of bronze, with a bas-relief of the “immortal’s” head and a brief summing up of his record.
Camp a Unanimous Choice
We think a gridiron hall of fame would be just as interesting and just as important to the history of football as the baseball idea will eventually be to the diamond pastime, and we are serious enough in this thought to hereby offer to dig up a donation to start any organized movement for the football hall, with a questioning glance at New Brunswick, N. J., as we make the offer.
The only important football memorial of which we have any specific knowledge at the moment is the great Walter Camp Gates at Yale, and, of course, Waiter Camp would necessarily be about the first name selected by anybody that knows American football for a place in a gridiron hall of fame.
Walter Camp, of Yale, was a great man. He didn’t originate football in this country, to be sure, but he had about as much to do with making it a big, important college game as any man that ever lived. He was the foremost figure in the football world across a long stretch of years, player, and coach, and writer,
The football hall of fame would have to have Knute Rockne in it, of course. Rockne, of Notre Dame, was a great player and a great coach. To this day his name is an inspiration to football players and teachers of the game. There are a lot of other names that come to mind when you are thinking of football “immortality,” but none as quickly as the names of Camp and Rockne.
There Are Many Eligibles
“Pudge” Heffelfinger, Hirschberger, Walter Eckersall, Percy Haughton, Reston Yost, Brick Muller, Pop Warner, Alonzo Stagg, Ted Coy, and scores of others would be entitled to a place. We suppose the right idea would be a limited number from each period or generation of the game.
If, like baseball, we were starting our gridiron hall of fame with but five names, we would have a tough task naming the quintet. Maybe it would be Camp, Rockne, Stagg, Warner, and Yost. Maybe it would be Ted Coy, Jim Thorpe, Eikersall, Heston and Muller. The list would require a lot of concentration and sifting. Hamilton Fish, Eddie Maban, Ernie Nevers, Red Grange, George Gipp, Frank Hinkey, Tom Shevlin, Charley Brickley, Ken Strong, Sam White, Dutch Clark. Why, if we keep on thinking of ’em we’ll soon have enough to pack not only a hall of fame with plaques, but the Pennsylvania Station and the Grand Central, too. But it’s an idea at that, isn’t it?
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