From jerseys to dreadlocks: How the Pro Football Hall of Fame selects its artifacts

A HEATING COIL from the “Ice Bowl.” Ankle tape from Tom Dempsey’s record 63-yard field goal. Hall of Fame running back Edgerrin James’ dreadlocks. They’re just a few of the 25,000 artifacts, 40 million documents and 6 million photographs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame archives in Canton, Ohio.

For Pro Football Hall of Fame archivist Jon Kendle, who oversees the Hall of Fame’s collections, the more unique the item, the better.

“It’s something that I’ve challenged our team with … to start thinking outside the box a little bit when it comes to collecting. It’s easy to ask for a jersey or a pair of shoes,” Kendle said. “Let’s think outside the box a little bit, and what are some unique items from a player’s uniform that might … help tell a story?”

Telling the story of football is one of the museum’s goals.

“Our mission is to honor the greatest of the game, preserve its history and its means, pro football and the National Football League, promote its values and celebrate excellence together,” Kendle said.

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A NEW CHAPTER of that story will begin when the Houston Texans and Chicago Bears meet in Canton on Thursday (8 p.m. ET, ESPN, ABC, ESPN+ and ESPN Deportes). The Hall of Fame Game will not only signal an unofficial start to the season but will also kick-start the museum’s efforts to document another year of NFL history.

But how does the Hall of Fame select what’s important to that history? It’s an evolving process that starts with a spreadsheet.

As teams go through training camp in July and August, the museum’s staff consults with each club and the league to get an idea of the potential milestones or records that could be reached during the season.

All of that data will be compiled on a master list that will be referenced throughout the year. The Hall of Fame had more than 50 potential items to track before the 2023 season began.

“Those career records, that’s how they jump on our radar and how we monitor those and move through as the season goes on,” Kendle said.

That list evolves as players hit unexpected milestones.

“The single-game records … you can’t predict those, those just happen,” Kendle said. “But that’s where … that relationship building over the years really comes into play.”

One such unique milestone belonged to New Orleans Saints quarterback Taysom Hill when he caught his 10th receiving touchdown in Week 9. Hill became the first player since Hall of Famer Frank Gifford to have at least 10 career rushing, receiving and passing touchdowns.

The Hall of Fame reached out to Hill after he reached the milestone and collected his jersey, shoes and wristband from the game. Within a few days, it was on display at the museum.

When Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin passed Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells on the all-time wins list in Week 18, the Hall of Fame collected his headset and a game ball for display.

New to the Pro Football Hall of Fame

Mike Tomlin’s headset and a game ball from when the @steelers defeated Baltimore in Week 18. The win allowed Tomlin to surpass Hall of Famer Bill Parcells on the NFL’s all-time wins list. pic.twitter.com/AYWqVcz744

— Pro Football Hall of Fame (@ProFootballHOF) January 26, 2024

Sometimes the Hall of Fame doesn’t always get an item it requests, like a jersey that the player chose to swap after the game instead. Every broken record doesn’t come with a request either, as the museum staff tries to spread out what it receives from each team.

When a career achievement is made during the season and the item is received, it is displayed temporarily in the Pro Football Today exhibit, which documents the season as it happens. At the end of the season, some of those items are displayed again as part of a Season in Review gallery.

Eventually, they go into climate-controlled archives, where they’ll be handled with white gloves and carefully stored for future exhibits.

“When they enter our doors and they get processed into our collection, they are no longer just a football jersey to be worn. They now become in our eyes, an artifact, and we treat them as such,” Kendle said. “We treat them as priceless pieces of art. We want to make sure that we’re doing everything in our power to make sure that these jerseys and footballs and these documents are preserved for future generations.”

But the collection of history doesn’t stop when the season stops. The Hall of Fame has collected the draft card of every player selected since 1997, ready to be shown to that player if they choose to visit the Hall of Fame.

“Those are always some fun moments because whether you’re a first overall pick or the last pick in the draft, my experience has been that every player that I have showed that card to … has a very similar response,” Kendle said. “It’s almost this humbled response, it takes them back to that moment, all that hard work through high school and college, the sacrifice to get to the NFL all paid off. And they’re all very … they’re all kind of blown away by it.”

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IN 2021, THE Hall of Fame temporarily displayed the leather chair that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell used when he announced picks from his basement in the 2020 draft during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When James was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2020, he chose to donate his dreadlocks as a symbol of what it means to be a teammate. The league ruled in 2003 that a player’s hair was considered an extension of the uniform, and pulling on the hair was considered a legal tackle.

That rule became notable in that season opener. James, then with the Indianapolis Colts, was pulled down by his dreadlocks in the Colts’ 9-6 win.

James, who rushed for only 67 yards and no touchdowns that day, chose to cut his hair the next week.

“It was a business decision,” he told reporters later. “I’m out here to play football. But when they grabbed my hair, that made me rethink. I instantly gave in right there. I can’t go through that all year. So I just thought that it would be best for me to go ahead and chop it off.”

James rushed for 120 yards and a touchdown the next week.

“It wasn’t that Edgerrin James was necessarily concerned about the pain that might come with getting his hair pulled, but as a great teammate, he’s thinking in terms of, if I have a breakaway touchdown and somebody tackled me because my hair was sticking out of my helmet, then I’m doing a disservice to my football team,” Kendle said. “… It’s a rare item, it’s the only hair that we have in our collection.”

One challenge for the Hall of Fame is to monitor its space. Unlike other museums, which document events that have already ended, football is always reinventing itself. That means the team there has to be discerning about items that tell the league’s story the best.

“It is an ever-changing, ever-growing history. It’s not a finite event that happened,” Kendle said. ” … Here at the Pro Football Hall of Fame, every day, the NFL is making new history.”

The museum’s ultimate goal is to tie the past and present together. So when the next player reaches a major milestone or breaks a record set by an enshrined Hall of Famer, the museum will be ready to pull out those old artifacts to showcase their achievements.

“Any time that we can connect a record that’s going on now to somebody in the past and help bring their legacy back to light, that’s always an added benefit because that’s what we’re trying to do, is connect these historical dots,” Kendle said.