Curtis Martin Inducted Into 2012 Hall Of Fame Class

[key2win]

Linemen lead, Martin brings tears to Hall of Fame - Yahoo! Sports

CANTON, Ohio (AP) -- The linemen led the way as they always do, accepting their inductions into the Pro Football Hall of Fame with an abundance of humility. Curtis Martin finished the evening by supplying plenty of tears.

The last of the six players to have their bronze busts unveiled Saturday night, Martin used the big stage to recall his rough life, his mother's pain and his life-long indifference to the game that allowed him to become famous.

''I don't necessarily have notes, so I'm going to just bare my soul,'' Martin cautioned. ''So bear with me.''

His moving story was the longest of the six and had the audience of 12,100 cheering supportively whenever one of the NFL's greatest running backs got choked up or lost for words. It was quite a way to end a three-hour induction that celebrated some of the game's best blockers and tacklers.

Linemen Willie Roaf, Chris Doleman, Cortez Kennedy and Dermontti Dawson and 1950s cornerback Jack Butler were the first inducted, accepting their honor with simple thanks and generally short stories.

All the way through, the evening had a strong Pittsburgh flavor.

Hundreds of Steelers fans sat on the field and in the stands, waving yellow ''Terrible Towels'' to celebrate the city's starring role. Two of the new Hall of Famers played for the Steelers - Butler and Dawson. Doleman and Martin played for the University of Pittsburgh after growing up in Pennsylvania.

When it was time for Martin, a former Jets star, to finish the evening, Broadway Joe Namath couldn't help but notice the ''J-E-T-S! J-E-T-S!'' chants were getting overwhelmed.

''I hear a lot of big mouths from Pittsburgh out there,'' he told the crowd. ''And justifiably - yes, yes!''

Martin soon had them dabbing their eyes.

He described growing up in a rough neighborhood in Pittsburgh, the son of an alcoholic father who would beat and torture his mother by setting her hair on fire or pressing burning cigarettes to her legs. His mother, Rochella, wiped tears from her eyes as he shared his story, occasionally pausing to collect himself.

''My greatest achievement in my life was healing my mother and nurturing my mother,'' Martin said.

She urged him to play football to stay out of trouble. Even when New England coach Bill Parcells decided to draft him out of Pitt, Martin wasn't sure he wanted to play. His pastor told him he could use football as a platform to do greater things.

''I played for a purpose bigger than the game because I knew that the love for the game just wasn't in my heart,'' Martin said.

He followed Parcells to the Jets and finished his career and the fourth-leading rusher in NFL history. Parcells became one of his biggest influences, and Martin chose him for the introduction on Saturday.

''He has tremendous compassion for his fellow man,'' Parcells said. ''He is, I think, the poster child for what the NFL is supposed to be. You come into the league, maximize your abilities, you save your money, you make a smooth transition into society and then you pass all those things on to other people. That's what this guy has done.''

The night that belonged to those who didn't have it easy.

Roaf was inducted first and set the tone. Standing in front of the large crowd in an unfamiliar role - getting attention for something good - he acknowledged feeling out of place.

''You know, it's an offensive lineman,'' Roaf said. ''I didn't get singled out in front of a large audience very often, and when I did, it was usually by a referee who was singling me out by saying, 'Holding No. 77.'

''That's not going to happen today. And it wasn't too often when I played.''

Roaf was one of the greatest players in Saints history, so good that he regularly made the Pro Bowl even though New Orleans had only one winning season in his nine years there. His induction gave the franchise something to celebrate after an offseason clouded by its bounty scandal.

Saints players sat in the last three rows of seats on the field, wearing black t-shirts with Roaf's No. 77 on the back. They're in town to play Arizona in the Hall of Fame preseason game on Sunday night.

Kennedy has something in common with Roaf. Like the offensive tackle from New Orleans, the defensive tackle from Seattle excelled on bad teams. It was his sustained excellence - not his team's success - that got him into the hall.

Kennedy grew into the game's top defensive tackle during his 11 seasons with Seattle. Even though Seattle went 2-14 in 1992 and Kennedy got double-teamed, he was so good that he was chosen the league's best defensive player.

''That's bad when you go to the game and the defensive coordinator says, 'Guys, we're not going to win the game. Let's don't embarrass ourselves.' You know we're in for a long year then,'' he said.

Dawson got the Steelers fans revved with his induction speech honoring the town and the franchise. Dawson succeeded Mike Webster as the Steelers' center, then followed him into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

''Mike was a leader whether he wanted to (be) or not because he led by example, and I tried to emulate everything Mike did,'' Dawson said. ''Mike had a profound impact on my life and even today, I try to lead by example and be like Mike.''

Dawson chose high school football coach Steve Parker to present him. If not for Parker, he might not have played the game. Dawson had a bad experience playing the sport in middle school and quit.

Parker met him in a hallway of their high school during his junior year and made him rethink.

''I came across this person who I thought was a man,'' Parker said. ''I said to him, 'Sir, may I help you?' He said he goes to school here, and I said, 'Where have you been all my life?'''

Doleman also traces his football roots to Pennsylvania, where he grew up and went to college. He recalled that his father had one rule: Finish what you start.

''Thank you for teaching me the importance of finishing what you started,'' Doleman said. ''And if it's any indication today, I finished the game I signed up for.''

Butler, inducted second, took the most unexpected path to the hall. He didn't play football in high school, picked the game in college at St. Bonaventure and entered the NFL as an undrafted player in 1951, just another player filling out the Steelers roster.

Butler, now 84, thanked his family and friends for being in Canton for his long-awaited moment.

''Heck, I'm thankful I'm here,'' he said. ''I thank you all.''

[key2win]

Curtis Martin reflects on mother’s pain, lack of passion for football at Hall of Fame

CANTON, Ohio – Curtis Martin never wanted to play football, never thought he'd live to age 21 and never imagined being inducted the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But Martin, in pouring out his heart about how the game played a part in his salvation, may have helped repair the game's image Saturday.

At a time when football, and the NFL in particular, have come under criticism for concussions and suicides believed to be related to head trauma, Martin gave anyone who had the honor of listening to his stirring Hall of Fame induction speech plenty reason to embrace the game. The former New England Patriots and New York Jets running back, an everyman-type who worked his way to be one of the game's leading rushers, spent 27 minutes baring his soul and telling the audience about how football saved him.

Even though he never had much passion for it.

For Martin, football was an escape from a home life that was tragic. Martin, who spoke without notes but with a clear understanding of what he was trying to say, recounted the violence of his young life. He talked about how his father used to "torture" his mother by burning her hair with a lighter or her skin with lit cigarettes.

He recounted again how his grandmother was found beaten to death in his family's apartment when he was nine. He remembered being 15 and having a gun pointed at his head as the gunman pulled the trigger seven times without the bullet firing. Finally, when the gunman pointed the gun away from Martin, the gun discharged.

Martin talked about learning to excel in a game that he barely enjoyed. When he was drafted by the Patriots in 1995, he got off the phone with then-coach Bill Parcells, turned to his family and said he didn't want to play professional football.

That's when his pastor, Leroy Joseph, said: " 'Curtis, look at it this way … maybe football is just something that God is giving you to do all those wonderful things that you say you want to do for other people.' I tell you, it was like a light bulb came on in my head."

Helping other people included what he calls his greatest accomplishment – getting his mother to forgive his father. Martin grew up watching his mother deal with the beatings from his father.

"You'd get punched in the face and go to work with a black eye with makeup on just to support us," Martin said as he looked at his mother Rochella Dixon. He recounted that after his grandmother was killed when someone took a knife to her chest, he asked his mother if she was going crazy. His mother said no, but then asked why he wanted to know.

"Because if you go crazy, nobody's going to be here to take care of me," Martin said, taking the collective breath from the audience.

As Martin joined Willie Roaf, Jack Butler, Cortez Kennedy, Dermontti Dawson and Chris Doleman in this year's class, he started by talking about how little passion he had for the game initially.

He took the game up only after being pushed into it by his mother pleading with him to do some type of after-school activity. She wanted him to escape his neighborhood and life in inner-city Pittsburgh. That morphed into him being offered scholarships by multiple schools.

"That didn't add up," Martin joked. "That's two things I don't like, school and football."

He added that he was a running back who didn't like to run and still doesn't. But by age 20, having survived his home life and having done "a bunch of things I wasn't proud of" along the way, Martin said he spoke to God. Martin had always expected to die by age 21

Instead, he promised that if he made it to 21, he would give his life over to his faith and "do whatever you want me to do."

In this case, that was football. For a man with little passion for the game, Martin played as hard as anyone. Former coaches and teammates have spoken over the years about Martin's toughness and willingness to play through pain as he gained at least 1,000 yards in each of his first 10 seasons.

That toughness was nurtured (perhaps coerced) by legendary coach Bill Parcells, who presented Martin for induction. Martin recounted several Parcells stories and "Parcells-isms" as he put it. One of those was when Parcells, after getting a call from an ailing Martin, said, "You should never come out of the huddle because you never know who is going in the huddle." That was Parcells' way of telling Martin that everyone was replaceable.

Martin admitted that his jealousy of any teammate who played running back drove him to outwork them and anyone else on the team. For a man who had little passion for the game, Martin threw himself into it.

This weekend, he started to grasp the love of the game when he listened to other Hall of Famers talk about their experiences.

And he came to a conclusion that might answer the fears of a lot of other people who are thinking about the game.

"I was asked by a reporter earlier this week if I would allow my child to play football," Martin said. "I don't know, I would probably be reluctant. But if my kid can learn what I learned from this game, I'd let him play. I think it's worth the risk."

[bakemeister52]

interesting speech from Curtis Martin