Sunday morning at the Super Bowl, and I have just enough time before heading to the stadium for an 18-hiour day to pen a few notes about the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection.
Very disappointing about Shannon Sharpe, and there is no time like now, but he made the final 10, and every candidate who has ever made the final 10 has gotten in sooner or later and Shannon likely will make it sooner, as in very soon.
Had a chance to visit the green room (since I set up the facilities at the media center I knew where all the green rooms were, and who was in which one) as soon as Floyd’s name was called.
Joe Ellis, our COO, had come over to the press conference, and we were very nervous waiting in the back of the room with Tom Mackie, who wrote Floyd’s book a couple of years ago.
When his name was called Joe and I made a dash for the green room and we could hear the uproar before we completed the short 20-yard dash.
Floyd was on the ground when I ran in, overcome with joy and emotion and surrounded by his wife, children, and their spouses.
His outpouring of passionate happiness over the next few minutes would have warmed the hearts of every Denver Broncos fan, particularly those–like me–who had tickets back in the day and watched him run with the weight of an entire time zone on his back.
There was cheering and screaming and crying and kissing, all as real as could be imagined, all captured by NFL network cameras, with Hall of Fame officials at the ready to take Floyd into his press introduction as a Hall of Famer.
Alfred Williams came by for congratulations, as did a couple of Denver reporters, and I was honored to be able to share some deep hugs and heart to heart moments with Floyd personally.
We go back a long way, to when I was a young radio announcer before beginning my 32-year career with the Broncos, to a time when he was … well … still Floyd.
Always Floyd.
A great player, filled with class and the kind of representation that every organization dreams of.
It brought back a lot of memories.
I did not let any press into the green room, but they smiled ear to ear from the door way watching Floyd with his family.
And when he walked out that door, and into the press conference, he walked like he never has before – as an official, forever and ever member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
His passion and tears were as real as Floyd Little himself has always been, and Bronco fans had a great day at Super Bowl XLIV.
44 at 44, and selector Jeff Legwold, whose passionate and well prepared presentation was cited to me by more than one member of the selection committee, gave me the opinion that there has never been a happier inductee.
Or one more deserving.
Congratulations, Franchise.
Tags: Floyd, Hall of Fame, Little
baylinorcrush, thanks for taking my post as it was written and not getting defensive like a lot of guys here do when a fan doesn’t agree with everything going on in Broncoland. Just a couple more thoughts with what goes thru my mind as a Bronco fan for 35+ years. The thing that upset me about the Shannahan’s firing were the number of injuries the last 2-3 years he coached. I don’t know that you can really blame him for that and I don’t see how anyone could say it didn’t affect the performance of the team.I would agree with anyone who suggested he was narrow minded when it came to defense and he should have given over the defense to a guy like M. Nolan, who really knows his stuff. I just couldn’t hardly watch the “prevent defense” that always seemed to prevent the Broncos from winning. If you are gonna be a control freak like Shanny , you got to know your stuff and in my opinion, defense was not something he knew.
McD’s lack of respect for the players is what really turned me against him. He made a big deal , and rightly so, of his team concept. Then he blind sided some players when the team was 6-0 and the guys didn’t trust him anymore, that’s how I see it anyhow. Hard to be at your best when you’re always looking over your shoulder. That and he is suppose to be and offensive minded coach. The offense stunk it up, hard to believe with all the talent on that side of the ball. I never was a Belichzk
fan and McD has the same approach. Look what’s going on with the Pat’s, pissed off players wanting out of the Patriot’s. Those guys risk their lives out on that field , they deserve some respect, they aren’t just a piece of meat.
imready, funny, I am a 35 year fan also, started late, I was 21 then. Anyhow, I do agree about your pain about how McD handles his players. I have said on many occasions that the man can be very sly, a bit arrogant and lacks maturity in everyday human psychology. He is supposedly great at the x’s and o’s, but he has very little feel for human contact. It’s not unusual for a man who is sort of a brainiac, somehow they let the important things in life pass them by, and I think that’s kind of what McD is going through at this point.
The good thing is listening to his end of the year season recap, he seems to be genuine when he says he realizes he did a lot of things wrong and means to correct them. Let’s remember that this is his first year as a HC and he came into it with all the best intentions in the world, but with the pressure of the job taking a stranglehold on him, he ended up panicking a bit and found himself doing all kinds of wrong stuff with both the players and the media, and it seriously backfired, but as I say, the good thing is I think he realizes it.
We have been joking around this last month saying he needs to go to a HC class in Argentina for a while, clear his head up and learn what is really important in his job, not just the x’s and o’s, but how to learn to become a respected leader by all of his players while selling them onto his team concept without alienating anyone. In short, it’s all about maturing in the job, like maturing in life, maybe a fourth of his players are older than he is, hence the extremely difficult task of establishing himself as their leader.
I am going to give him carte blanche for one more year, but he needs to show sizable improvement off the field in his leadership role and the human element of the job, and on the field by keeping his team focused the entire year and getting into the playoffs. Anything short of that will be very hard to accept, considering he has been given all the liberty to chose his own staff and own players, and since he parted with Nolan it is now more than ever his way and his way only and if he doesn’t perform, it probably is not going to work out.
In short, I am disappointed at his first year as a coach, but I would expect that from someone who has never been one, difference is now this is his 2nd year, he is no longer a rookie and I am not going to be cutting him that much slack anymore. I can’t wait to see how much growing up he does, and I truly hope he can turn us into a winning team again. I am not overly optimistic as in life I know we are what we are and we don’t necessarily change, but he needs to smoothen out a lot of his rough edges if he wants any shot at succeeding. He seriously underestimated the age factor coming into this job, repeatedly saying it was not a factor at all, well, yes, it is, and if you know that it is then you can take the appropriate actions to improve areas where you lack maturity and experience and make sure it doesn’t stand in the way of your goals. If you don’t know that it is a factor, or refuse to see that it is a factor, well, we saw what happened….