Football Halls of Fame: The Hall That Lived in South Bend, and the Names in the Halls

Football halls of fame · the Hall that lived here, and the names in the halls

For seventeen years South Bend held the College Football Hall of Fame — not a branch or a loan, but the Hall itself, in a city-built building on St. Joseph Street, two miles south of the campus whose team fills more of the Hall's roster than any other school in the game. This section runs the halls test on the city whole. First, the Hall's South Bend era entire: the road that brought it here out of a failed site in Ohio, the competition the city won and the bond-financed deal it struck, the building and what happened inside it — the attendance that never came as promised, the school programs that ran through it, the July enshrinement festivals that made it a civic season — and the leaving, in 2012, and what has stood on the ground since. Second, the rosters as they touch this ground: Notre Dame's fifty College Hall players and six College Hall coaches, enumerated name by name from the National Football Foundation's own record with its as-of date; South Bend's own sons tested one by one against that record — a test with one positive answer, a Washington High School halfback named Eddie Talboom; and the Pro Football Hall of Fame at Canton, its Notre Dame fourteen enumerated and its thinner South Bend ties — a single playing season by Curly Lambeau among them — printed at their exact strength. Third, the boundaries: the Indiana Football Hall of Fame is Richmond's institution, and South Bend's names in it are printed at roster size from the Hall's own roster; the South Bend Community Hall of Fame, the city's own hall, is stated at its size; and the College Hall's present life in Atlanta is boundary-printed once. No other hall is claimed.