HALL OF FAME HIGHLIGHTS
You don’t have to personalize your HOF experience by selecting a specific college — but as one of the attraction’s many friendly and helpful employees informed me, “That’s the funnest part!” Still, there are lots of other highlights packed into the three-story facility, including:
- Hardware: Nearly all the major individual and bowl game trophies are on display. That includes the inaugural College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy, described as "an ascending virtual football."
- History: Along with numerous artifacts (famous jerseys, the infamous "Stanford band" trombone, etc.), a wall-spanning timeline hits all the highs ("Georgia's Herschel Walker became the first freshman consensus All-America of the modern age") and lows ("1892: The Flying Wedge play is introduced … the dangerous tactic remains legal for only one more season") of the college game's development.
- Honoring the best: The third floor is devoted to the Hall of Fame itself; interactive screens let visitors dig into their own school's roster of greats or search for particular honorees.
- Onscreen: Fans can watch a behind-the-scenes look at game day in the "Game Day Theater" or broadcast a segment from the anchor desk in a replica version of ESPN's "College Gameday" traveling studio.
- On the field: The first floor features a 45-yard indoor football field where visitors can put their gridiron abilities (passing, kicking) to the test at the "Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl Skill Zone."
- Ongoing: After your "personalized" visit, you can go to www.cfbhall.com to access and download videos and pictures from your experience.
- Shopping, eating: There's a large gift shop near the entrance and a concession area with seating by the indoor field; there's also one of the nicest Chick-fil-As you've probably ever been in (football-themed decor, food delivered to your tables!) right next door.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME AND CHICK-FIL-A FAN EXPERIENCE
10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sundays-Fridays, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturdays (closed Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day; also closed on Oct. 7 for the Dedication Gala and Enshrinement Ceremony). $19.99 (adults), $17.99 (students, military and ages 65 and up); $16.99 (ages 3-12). 250 Marietta St. N.W., Atlanta. 404-880-4800, www.cfbhall.com.
Just call me Rudy.
Ten minutes into my rookie visit last week to downtown's spectacular new College Football Hall of Fame (and Chick-fil-A Fan Experience — yes, it's a very XXL-sized name), I felt like the title character in the iconic 1993 movie. Only instead of finally getting in for one play in Notre Dame's last game of the season, my shining moment came when my college's name popped up on the touch screen where I had just registered my "all access pass" (aka, my admission ticket).
Color me surprised.
But wait! It gets even better.
In the movie, undersized-but-scrappy little Rudy ended up tackling the opposing quarterback (from Georgia Tech … um, no judgment) and being carried off the field on the Notre Dame team’s shoulders. Me? I actually got to see my college’s headgear light up on the colossal Helmet Wall that greets gobsmacked visitors as they walk through the Hall of Fame’s (HOF) front doors.
Five rows up from the bottom. Right next to the legendary blue-and-gold UCLA helmet and a mere two spots away from SEC powerhouse Texas A&M’s:
Harvard, baby.
Yes, that well-known football powerhouse (cough, cough!) Harvard. My alma mater. Usually, having attended Harvard is not such a bad thing. It looks good on your resume and makes for interesting cocktail party conversation in the, "Say, did you know Thoreau and the Unabomber are both my fellow alums?" vein.
Yet it feels quite different when you’re contemplating a visit to the College Football Hall of Fame.
All of a sudden, it feels like you were a complete dope for not having matriculated somewhere like Alabama or Florida State. Or Oklahoma, UGA, Ohio State or any of a hundred other schools whose rich winning traditions don’t make the HOF’s promise to provide a “personalized” experience for visitors sound like a threat to publicly humiliate you.
When you register your ticket, it activates a computer chip that highlights content at many of the HOF’s displays that pertain to your college team. But what if you show up and absolutely nothing is highlighted, I agonized as I entered right behind a fellow who took one look around and bellowed “Roll Tide!” at the top of his lungs. And what if you’re not a die-hard fan of any one particular team or — gasp!— of college football in general? Is it still worth a visit to downtown Atlanta’s newest big-time attraction?
The answers, as I discovered during my two-hour visit on the football-frenzied Friday of “Chick-fil-A Kickoff” game(s) weekend, are: Don’t worry, unless your school is Hogwarts, your HOF experience will end up being personalized somehow. The Helmet Wall alone contains 768 different college football teams’ helmets, so pretty much everyone coming through the doors can have their Rudy moment. Nor does that “the few, the proud, the 768” experience end there. As you approach a 52-foot-long interactive media wall on the second floor, your school’s logo appears, along with player photos from different eras, reproduced magazine covers and more.
Meanwhile, the HOF has something to interest almost everyone — from aspiring coaches ("Take Your Team to the Top" is an interactive area where would-be Mark Richts have to recruit players, equip the team weight room, and much more) and TV broadcasters; to amateur historians and fashionistas of the game (there are displays showcasing college football's very first penalty flag and the fur coats fans used to tailgate in); to "American Idol" types, who can perform a karaoke version of their school's fight song and email a videotaped copy to family or post it on social media later.
By the time I got to the karaoke area, I was no longer surprised to discover my school’s truly awful fight song included among the many better-known ones. But that doesn’t mean anyone else is ever going to see that clip of me warbling “Ten Thousand Men of Harvard … want victory today!” horribly off-key.
I may have been dumb enough to go to Harvard.
But I'm not a complete idiot.
About the Author
