re: College Football Hall of Fame opens today!

I figure I should give my rundown on my thoughts.



When you enter you see all of the helmets of the hundreds of schools associated with football. This is not an NCAA affiliated museum, just to be clear.

You are given a lanyard with a pass attached to it. (you can see above the one I was given. Everyones is the same except yours will say "fan" instead of "VIP"). These passes have a code on the back of them. You walk up to a registration kiosk and enter in your information including name, school affiliation and email. Once someone with a school affiliation signs in, the helmet on the big helmet wall lights up (i assume it is a daily scenario so that you can see all the different fans that have been there so far that day).

It has three levels.

Bottom has a 50 yard(?) field where kids can do field goals, passes etc. It also has the gift shop.

2nd floor is the meat of the museum. Most of the pictures I included are in the second floor. They discuss everything from the evolution of tailgating to the evolution of gear and things such as the stories of legendary coaches and the way they coached their teams.

This is an EXTREMELY interactive museum. That pass around your neck has an RFID chip in it which senses when you walk up to one of the interactive activities. It pulls up your name and the team you affiliate with. It also keeps "achievements" of the different things you have interacted with. There are great exhibits that show rivalry traditions, and another that show playbooks from the past. I had a good time looking at questionnaires filled out during a football camp by Wuerfel and Peyton Manning.

The second floor also has a really great movie that lasts about 10 minutes which really gets your blood pumping for football.

3rd floor has some other exhibits but to be honest my wife and I were a bit done at that point which we went down to the exit which of course is through the gift shop. There are some cool things in the gift shop but they are very over priced.


In total, I would give the museum a 8/10

Last thoughts: This is an absolute blast for college football fans. It is an interactive and lively environment which will be a lot of fun for many fans.

I will say that this is more of a Museum of college football than it is a Hall of Fame. I walked out not knowing anyone who was actually a part of the hall of fame (granted I may have missed an exhibit that did display this). They decided to leave all the plaques and busts up in South Bend in order to be a more fun and interactive experience. I will be honest and say that I am not the football expert that would have fun looking at plaques and busts. There are some that will not like this fact and I can understand that.

In all this is a shrine to the game of college football. It is something that visiting fans should 100% come to see when visiting as it correlates exactly to what we love about college football.