Pro Football Hall of Fame Game

• 1. Introduction

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  The Pro Football Hall of Fame Game holds a particular place on the American sports calendar: it is the first NFL contest since the prior season's Super Bowl, nearly six months earlier. Every August, in Canton, Ohio, two NFL teams take the field at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium while across the parking lot, new legends are being prepared for bronze. The game began in August 1962, the same year ground was broken for the Hall of Fame building itself, and it was designed not as a celebration but as a fundraiser for the construction project. How did a preseason exhibition become the official launch of the NFL year? Why do some of its editions end not with a final score but with a cancellation? And what does the story of one melted synthetic field have to do with the way the weekend is now scheduled?

• 2. Canton and the First Kickoff

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  the 11th of August 1962 brought the New York Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals to Canton for a game that ended in a 21-21 tie, with no winner needed and the point already made: the Hall of Fame had a signature event. The stadium sits adjacent to the Hall of Fame building as part of the Hall of Fame Village, making the geography of the weekend almost literal. The ceremony and the game occupy the same patch of Ohio ground.

  For decades the scheduling wandered. Before the AFL-NFL merger, the game sometimes fell as late as September, even at the very end of the preseason. In 1970 it shifted to the start of the preseason, and it has stayed there. When the league permanently moved the start of the regular season to the weekend after Labor Day in 2001, the Hall of Fame Game settled into its current window: early August, between July 31 and August 6, generally on a Thursday since 2017.

  In 2002 the Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony itself was relocated from the steps of the museum to the football stadium, which tightened the schedule considerably. Now, immediately after the final whistle, workers begin erecting the stage and seating area for the induction ceremony that follows.

• 3. Who Gets to Play

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  Team selection for the Hall of Fame Game follows a quiet logic rooted in the ceremony it accompanies. The participants are typically announced around Super Bowl week, at roughly the same time the new class of inductees is revealed. When a particularly notable player enters the Hall, the league tends to pick a team closely associated with that player, aiming to boost attendance and interest in the game.

  From year to year, the standard formula pairs one AFC team against one NFC team. One notable exception came when the league recognized the 50th anniversary of the American Football League, pairing two AFC teams that were among the original eight AFL franchises in 1960: the Tennessee Titans, who dressed as their earlier incarnation the Houston Oilers, and the Buffalo Bills. Bills owner Ralph Wilson was inducted into the Hall that same year.

  Since 2011, every team chosen to play in the game has had at least one prominent alumnus entering the Hall that year. The last four expansion teams added to the NFL all played their very first game in Canton. Jacksonville and Carolina faced each other as expansion clubs; Houston appeared later; and the rebooted Cleveland Browns, who returned to the league with a fresh roster, played in the Hall of Fame Game as their debut. The Baltimore Ravens, officially established in 1996 following the Browns' relocation, did not play in the game until 2018. That appearance completed the set: all 32 current NFL teams have now appeared at least once.

• 4. When the Game Did Not Happen

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  Three times in the game's history, the scheduled matchup was canceled, and each cancellation tells a distinct story. The 2011 game between the Chicago Bears and the St. Louis Rams fell victim to a labor dispute that had disrupted nearly all league activity that offseason. The two clubs set a deadline of July 22 to ratify a resolution in time to prepare. The league and players did not ratify their agreement until July 25, three days too late.

  The 2016 cancellation was stranger and more abrupt. The Green Bay Packers and the Indianapolis Colts were ready to play. On the morning of the game, stadium officials discovered that the logos painted at midfield and in the end zones had been applied using paint not intended for synthetic FieldTurf. The paint had not dried. Workers tried to speed up the process by heating the field, which caused the turf's rubber infill to melt. Officials then attempted to fix the slick, cement-like surface by applying paint thinner, until a Packers employee noticed a label warning that the substance could cause burns on skin contact. At 6:40 p.m. EDT, eighty minutes before scheduled kickoff, both teams were told the game was off. Fans inside the stadium learned about the cancellation only through social media; no official announcement came until just before the scheduled 8 p.m. start, and it was met with boos.

  The 2020 game, which would have featured the Dallas Cowboys against the Pittsburgh Steelers, was canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic along with all other preseason games that year. The Cowboys-Steelers matchup was held over and finally played in 2021.

• 5. A Scheduling Fix and Its Consequences

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  The 2016 field disaster directly reshaped how the Hall of Fame weekend runs today. The following year, 2017, the game was moved to Thursday night, placing it before the induction ceremony rather than after. The reasoning was straightforward: holding the game first gave the stadium time to recover before the ceremony, reducing the chance of another last-minute chaos. The Thursday-night format has been maintained ever since.

  That shift also means the participating teams play one more exhibition game than everyone else in the league. Before 2021, that was four preseason games total; since 2021, it has been three for most teams, meaning the Hall of Fame participants play an extra game at the front of the schedule.

  One side effect the source notes: both teams in the Hall of Fame Game end up with an additional exhibition contest compared to all other NFL clubs, a small but real scheduling asymmetry that has been a fixture of the game's calendar position for decades.

• 6. On the Air

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  For most of its history the Hall of Fame Game has landed on ABC, initially in the Wide World of Sports package on Sunday afternoons from 1963 to 1965, and then typically on Saturday afternoons before shifting to Monday night in 1998. That year's Saturday-night broadcast served as a test run for the eventual Monday Night Football placement. Al Michaels and Frank Gifford were the voices of the game for much of this era, with Howard Cosell a constant presence through the 1970s and into the early 1980s.

  In 2006 the game moved to NBC as part of the Sunday Night Football package, which had replaced Monday Night Football as the league's flagship primetime broadcast. NBC has aired the game in most years since. Exceptions come during Summer Olympics years: because NBC holds the broadcast rights to the Games, the Hall of Fame Game is sold to another NFL media partner in 2012, 2016, 2021, 2024, 2028, and 2032. The 2007 game went to NFL Network after NBC had planned to air a preseason game in Beijing that was ultimately canceled.

  Unlike most preseason games, which air only on local television, the Hall of Fame Game broadcasts nationwide. CBS is currently the only major linear television network that has not aired the game. The 2024 contest, handled by ESPN due to the Paris Olympics, was simulcast on ABC.