The Enshrinement Festival: the city's football weekend

Each July, 1995 – 2012

The Hall's civic weight concentrated in one weekend a year. The Enshrinement Festival was the Foundation's annual two-day celebration in South Bend: a celebrity golf tournament, a fan festival, a parade through the downtown, a flag football game with the inductees, live concerts and fireworks, and at the end the Enshrinement Dinner & Show, held at Century Center, at which the new class took its place in the Hall. The 2005 festival was billed as the eleventh annual, which counts the series from 1995, the Hall's opening summer. Two of the Foundation's honors were born at the South Bend festival: the Chris Schenkel Award for broadcasting, given annually from 1996 during the festival and named for its first recipient, and the Divisional Hall of Fame program, launched in 1996 at the festival, which opened the Hall to the game's smaller-college ranks. The downtown parade began as the Enshrinement Parade of Champions — the 2005 procession was billed as its inaugural — and grew into the festival's Grand Parade, routed, in the city's 2006 permit record, down Washington Avenue from Michigan Street to St. Joseph and on to the Hall.

The machinery of honor ran on a two-stage calendar. In the festival's earlier South Bend years a class was inducted in December at the Foundation's Annual Awards Dinner in New York and enshrined the following summer in South Bend — the class of 2000, for instance, was enshrined here in 2001, and the class of 2005 was inducted on December 6, 2005 at the Waldorf-Astoria and enshrined in the summer following. By the festival's last years the releases describe the induction itself taking place at the festival: the class of 2011 was, in the University of Dayton's account of its coach Mike Kelly, "officially inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame during the Annual Enshrinement Festival on July 16 in South Bend." The documented editions of the festival in the record run 2005 (in August, that year), the parade of August 12, 2006 in the city's minutes, and then each July: July 20–21, 2007; July 18–19, 2008; July 17–18, 2009; July 16–17, 2010; July 15–16, 2011, which added a ribs cook-off and a block party under executive director Lisa Malin's redesign of the weekend; and July 20–21, 2012, the last. For one weekend a year the festival made the Hall what the bid had promised the city it would be — a national football occasion staged in the downtown, with the game's immortals in the parade and their cleats on the Gridiron at the youth clinic — and the other fifty weeks were the museum's own quieter problem.

Sources:

1. National Football Foundation, Enshrinement Festival releases, 2007–2012 — the festival's components and dates, the Enshrinement Youth Football Clinic, and the Enshrinement Dinner & Show at Century Center.
2. BYU athletics, August 12, 2005 — the 2005 festival as the eleventh annual, and its inaugural Enshrinement Parade of Champions through downtown South Bend.
3. National Football Foundation — the Chris Schenkel Award, given annually since 1996 during the Enshrinement Festival in South Bend; and the Divisional Hall of Fame program, launched in 1996 during the annual enshrinement festival.
4. City of South Bend, Board of Public Works minutes, August 10, 2006 — the College Football Hall of Fame parade route and date.
5. University of Dayton athletics, September 27, 2011 — Mike Kelly's induction during the Enshrinement Festival of July 16, 2011, in South Bend.
6. UWire, July 22, 2010, and the National Football Foundation release of January 22, 2008 — the 2009 dinner at Century Center and Malin's festival additions: the ladies' fashion show and brunch, the ribs cook-off and the expanded Grand Parade.