Canton: Notre Dame's fourteen in the Pro Football Hall of Fame

Classes of 1963 – 2022

The second hall is in Canton, Ohio, and it is boundary enough to say so once: the Pro Football Hall of Fame is Canton's institution, and South Bend's claim on it runs through the same university. Notre Dame's men in Canton, enumerated from the Pro Football Hall of Fame's record and the university's, are fourteen — thirteen players and one contributor — a total the Pro Football Hall itself headlined in 2024, tied with Southern California for the most of any college program. The thirteen players, at their induction years: Curly Lambeau (1963), a charter member; John "Blood" McNally (1963), a charter member; George Trafton (1964); Wayne Millner (1968); George Connor (1975); Paul Hornung (1986); Alan Page (1988); Joe Montana (2000); Nick Buoniconti (2001); Dave Casper (2002); Jerome Bettis (2015); Tim Brown (2015); and Bryant Young (2022). The fourteenth is Edward DeBartolo Jr. (2016), inducted as a contributor — a Notre Dame graduate who owned the San Francisco 49ers and never played the college game; the tie is the degree and the ownership, and it is printed as such, not as a playing honor. Published counts of Notre Dame's Canton total vary — eleven, thirteen, fourteen — according to whether contributors and multi-school players are counted and when the count was taken; the enumeration here counts the fourteen names above, and the variance is a counting method, not a dispute about any man's membership.

Five men stand in both halls. Wayne Millner, George Connor, Paul Hornung, Alan Page and Dave Casper are in the College Football Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame both — the College Hall's fifty and Canton's fourteen overlap in exactly those five. The rest of the Canton fourteen divide instructively: Montana, Buoniconti, Bettis and Young are Canton's without the College Hall — the College Hall's rules and electorates are its own — and Lambeau, McNally and Trafton, the three earliest, are Canton's charter-era men whose Notre Dame ties are the subject of the next entry, because each of the three touches this ground at a different and easily misstated strength.

Sources:

1. Pro Football Hall of Fame — its record of Notre Dame's fourteen inductees (the Hall's account of June 5, 2024), and its inductee register for the classes and years above.
2. University of Notre Dame athletics (fightingirish.com), August 6, 2015 — the twelve at the enshrinement of Bettis and Brown, and the names and years of the earlier ten.
3. Blue and Gold Illustrated, June–July 2012 — the five men in both halls: Millner, Connor, Hornung, Page and Casper.