“If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day.” Jim Valvano
In case you missed it, the Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrinement festival on Saturday, which included speeches by the inductees, turned out to be something special. Many of the speeches, especially the ones by Shannon Sharpe and Deion Sanders, provided some riveting and highly emotional moments.
Should that really be so surprising?
For some, football is a brutal sport played by the toughest of men. For many of football’s critics, it is easy to stereotype players with the “dumb jock” mind-set.
But if a person who had never seen a football game had tuned in on Saturday, that stereotype would not have been evident.
Where to begin.
It might not be possible to pick out a favorite moment. Like a great sporting event, it had its ebbs and flows with momentum swings and crescendos. But some speeches stood out more than others.
Let’s start with Sharpe.
Always confident and colorful — “Nothing was going to keep me from realizing my dreams” — Sharpe was also humble when he talked about the influence of his older brother, Sterling, who played for Green Bay for seven seasons:
“I’m the only player of 267 men that’s walked through this building to my left that can honestly say this: I’m the only pro football player that’s in the Hall of Fame, and the second best player in my own family. “
He continued:
“Sterling, you are my hero, my father figure, my role model. You taught me everything I know about sports and a lot about life. I never once lived in your shadow. I embraced it.”
Sharpe got emotional when he talked about his grandmother:
“What do you say about a person that gives you everything but life? How do you start to say thank you, Granny, for a woman that raises nine of her kids and your mom’s three, and she sacrificed more for her grandkids than she did her own. My grandmother was a very simple woman. She didn’t want a whole lot. My grandmother wanted to go to church and Sunday school every Sunday. She wanted to be in Bible study every Wednesday. The other days she wanted to be on a fishing creek.”
“The only regret that I have in my 43 years that I never told my grandmother just how much she means to me.”
He continued:
“See, when my grandfather died, I missed one day, the day of the funeral. My grandmother didn’t believe in that. If you promise somebody you’re going to do something, you do it. As my grandmother was laying in that casket on Saturday morning, I walked over to her, and I asked her two things. I asked her two things: I said, “Granny, am I the man you thought I would be when you got on the train and you came to Chicago and got me at three months? Am I the man you thought I would be?” And I stood there for about 20 seconds and I could see her smiling.”
“Then I asked her, “Are you proud?” I said, Granny, are you proud of your baby? Because everything I’ve done in my life, I’ve tried to please you.”
It seemed impossible for Sanders to be able to compete with Sharpe’s speech, but he did. He was at his best when he was talking about his mother and his connection to the Fort Myers Rebels, a youth football team he played for:
“Everybody on their team, their parents owned something. Their parents were doctors or lawyers or the chief of police. It was that type of organization. Me and one of my friends were the only African-American kids on that team. It was a very affluent team, and I was ashamed of my mama because my mama worked in the hospital. She cleaned up the hospital, and I was ashamed of my mama who sacrificed, who loved me, who protected me, who gave me everything.”
“I was ashamed of my mama because one of my friends in high school, he saw her in a hospital one night pushing a cart, and he came back and he clowned me, he ridiculed me and he mocked me because of my mama. So I made a pledge to myself that I don’t care what it takes, I don’t care what it may take, I’m not going to do anything illegal, but my mama would never have to work another day of her life.”
Sanders continued:
“See the problem is with some dreams, the dreams are only about you. If your dream ain’t bigger than you, there is a problem with your dream. I understood there were going to be stones, because when you make a difference, there are going to be haters.
“When you’re provoking change, there are going to be naysayers. People don’t condone what they’ve never seen. But when you talked about me, media, guess what, behind I saw my mama. When you wrote about me, when you naysayed me, when you criticized me, I looked right through your TV and I saw my mama.
“When you told me what I couldn’t do, when you told me what I didn’t do, when you told me what I would never be, I saw my mama pushing that cart. When you told me I was too small, I wasn’t educated enough, I saw my mama because I made a promise. And whenever you make a promise, there will be a responsibility to that promise. You have to maintain that responsibility, that’s why I love this game.”
Extra Point: What were some of your favorite or most memorable moments from the speeches?
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