Hey guys,

I'm currently in Canton, Ohio, home of the Pro Football Hall Of Fame. In about six hours, Fred Dean, Darrell Green, Art Monk, Emmitt Thomas, Andre Tippett and Gary Zimmerman will be inducted as Hall Of Famers, immortalized forever as some of the greatest men to ever play the game. I'll be attending the induction ceremony tonight, but have been here for the last day and a half checking out the Hall Of Fame and the new and improved Madden NFL exhibit, celebrating 20 years of football gaming goodness. I'm on a pretty busy schedule out here, but I'm going to do my best over the next couple of days to keep you up to date on everything that's happening. When I get back into the office early next week, I'll post a full recap (with tons of pictures) on Madden09.com. In the mean time, consider this my NFL Hall Of Fame Diary.


Friday's Events

Friday morning I visited the Pro Football Hall Of Fame for the first time. It's an amazing experience for anyone who loves professional football, and somewhere you absolutely have to visit at least once if you're a fan. After looking at all of the exhibits in the Hall, we held a ribbon cutting ceremony with soon to be HOFer Darrell Green. Darrell helped us re-open our Madden NFL exhibit at the Hall, celebrating 20 years of video football goodness. It says a lot that Madden NFL is considered such an important part of professional football culture that it merits its own area in the HOF.

In the afternoon we headed to the 2008 Enshrinees Dinner, where several thousand fans watched as the 2008 HOF class put on their gold jackets for the very first time. This was an incredible thing for me to see as a Redskins fan, and as someone who used to pretend I was Art Monk out on the playground playing football with friends when I was growing up. What made it surreal though, were the several dozen past HOFers who were introduced throughout the night. Art Donovan, Deacon Jones, Joe Gibbs, Michael Irvin, Tommy McDonald, Anthony Munoz, Gale Sayers, and the man himself, John Madden made their way onto the stage.

As if the night couldn’t get any better, we attended a hospitality reception after the dinner. This was a much more exclusive event, as evidenced by the fact that you couldn’t turn around without bumping into someone wearing a golden jacket. For this die hard football fan, it was almost impossible to process the fact that dozens of the greatest men to ever play the game were in the same room at the same time. Even walking out of the reception I spied *** Butkus sitting outside telling “war stories” to a small group of very interested listeners.

Tonight is the official induction Ceremony, and tomorrow is the HOF game kicking of the NFL preseason. Isn’t it about time football is here? I’ll be back with my thoughts on the ceremony and the game later this weekend. Talk to you guys again soon.

-raczilla