Visiting the Pro Football Hall of Fame

Russ Crawford, history professor at Ohio Northern University, told me last fall that the Pro Football Hall of Fame has a display that features the relationship between football and the U.S. military. So yesterday I made the drive from Toledo to Canton (living in Ohio does have its advantages) to see for myself. This is part of a larger research project that examines the intersections between the military and entertainment industries, but I'll share some preliminary observations here.

First, the experience of going to football's HOF is entirely different than making the trip to see the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. All of baseball's agrarian mythology is on display in Cooperstown, and the idyllic Main Street setting is, of course, a metaphor for America itself. If football's mythology is more industrial--and it is--then it isn't surprising that its HOF is located in the middle of the Rust Belt (and yes, Canton is the "birth place" of professional football). But the difference is striking in aesthetic terms. Cooperstown is beautiful; Canton is, well, not. Architecturally, the baseball HOF is a classic structure; the football HOF is unconventional, a testament to mid-20th century modernism (it opened in 1963). All in all, the the Pro Football Hall of Fame is surprisingly utilitarian.

Second, the military exhibit--"Pro Football and the American Spirit"--is one of the largest and most well developed of the museum. I have much to say on the whole thing--premised on the critical question, "Why is this part of the museum at all?"--but I'll just point to two themes here.

One is that the exhibit isn't exactly arranged chrononlogically. Rather, it directs visitors first to a display memorializing World War II. The "Good War," of course, is a comfortable narrative for Americans--i.e., Hitler was evil, the U.S. fought based on a moral imperative, and it's a war we can feel good about, especially because it was fought by the "Greatest Generation." There's an entire industry built around memories of WWII/Greatest Generation, so I'll not say more at the moment. Interestingly, the layout of the exhibit places World War II next to the War on Terror. So, if you walk to your right, you get to post-9/11 display cases. But, if you walk to your left, you can navigate America's 20th century conflicts--Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf--before ending with 9/11.

Thus, spatially, the exhibit makes an equation between World War II and the War on Terror. This is consistent, of course, with much of the post-9/11 discourse in the U.S., which not only compared the terrorist attacks to Pearl Harbor but also suggested that Americans needed the moral certainty they had during WWII. I would not be the first rhetorical critic to point out that memories of World War II are often used to reconstruct our expectations about contemporary citizenship (Georgia's Barbara Biesecker does this persuasively in her critique of Saving Private Ryan). Yet there's little doubt that the "Good War" serves an important function for us today--it affirms that U.S. policies and actions have been, and remain, noble and just and moral. Thus, the linkage between WWII and the War on Terror rhetorically positions visitors to the HOF to understand the conflicts in similar terms, despite the fact that they are almost completely dissimilar.

A second concern comes from the memorializing of Pat Tillman. As you likely know, Tillman is the former Arizona Cardinals player who gave up his NFL career to enlist in the Army Rangers after 9/11. Despite Tillman's aversion to the spotlight, he was upheld as a national exemplar by the NFL, sports media, and politicians. When he was killed in Afghanistan in 2004, the mythologizing of his heroism was pervasive. We now know, of course, that he was killed by "friendly fire" and that he was deeply conflicted about what he termed an "illegal" war. Nevertheless, the Tillman myth persists, as the HOF exhibit demonstrates. The display of Tillman itself is titled "Duty and Courage," and it features a Tillman jersey, his Army Ranger uniform, a replica of the Tillman statue outside Arizona's stadium, and a narrative that explains his enlistment. The only reference to his death states, “His heroic efforts to provide cover for his fellow soldiers as they escaped from the canyon led to his tragic death via fratricide.” Although I do not expect the HOF to provide a comprehensive deconstruction of Tillman's death, this sentence is terribly inadequate.

Yet, most striking to me was the audible narration coming from a video kiosk immediately behind me as I was looking at this display. The video described the NFL reaction to 9/11, and it featured Tillman prominently. It included a brief clip from an interview with Tillman himself, who said that 9/11 caused him to think about the advantages he had in America, especially the "freedom we're allowed." Not surprisingly, this was the only time Tillman's voice was included, and it therefore presented a rather one-dimensional portrayal. The most bitter irony, then, is that even though Tillman insisted he did not want publicity, and that even though he was critical about the war's purpose, the HOF display undermines his humanity by reducing him to the mythological hero that he only partially was. Thus, the "freedom" he valued in life is all but stolen from him in death.