After Sydney Seau, Football Hall of Fame Policy Will Be Tested Again

It’s amazing how people can be so selfish about certain situations. It’s tragic that Sydney was unable to speak of behalf of her father who is not here anymore. The fact that these deceased NFL players’ relatives do not get treated with the respect that they should be given. The fact that Sydney was able to make such a big announcement without including any parts of her father’s disease is outstanding. The NFL needs to take more responsibility on how they are treating “their” people.

Don't forget to thank the NFL by shutting off your televisions every Sunday this fall, America.

Great job Sydney! I know your family and especially your Father appreciate the fine job you did Saturday night at the Football Hall of Fame.

Junior Seau - like so many before and since - left his heart and his body on the gridiron. The notion that the Hall of Fame or the NFL should control, manage, and define any process for recognition of atheletic accomplishment is mere folly. Without young men like Seau, millionaire and billionaire NFL franchise owners like Craft, Mara, Ross and others would have to rely on other endeavors to satiate their financial appetites! In fact, given the violence and mayhem of football and resulting damage to so many who have played the game, one could make the case that the paid football player is - in fact - engaged in indetured servitude.

Screwing up a butter sandwich is one of the best lines I've ever heard and will use it in the future, thank you HapinOregon. Greed rules in professional sports; apparently the Hall of Fame is in that group, too.

Another PR blunder by the HOF and NFL by extension. Letting this young woman remember her father would have put a better face on the ceremony; by refusing to allow family members to speak -- in a veiled effort to keep them from bashing the game, it appears -- they bring more scrutiny down up themselves. I'm so glad that my husband is finally fed up enough with football that he dropped his NFL Sunday Ticket subscription. With all the legal troubles of the players and the horrible injuries these men suffer (willingly, I know, but many older players likely didn't know how they'd end up), the NFL has lost my teen sons and husband as fans. Finally.

Let's see: the HOF allows Fran Tarkenton to speak for his live friend Mick Tinglehoff but won't let Sydney Seau speak for her deceased father.

What's up with that?

Yeah, I love to watch pro football, especially the Pack, but c'mon, these guys need to be better protected. The technology exists to improve their helmets, shoulder pads, etc., to mitigate and
better absorb the energy from hits. Whatever it costs, do it. It's like body cams for cops. It'll make a huge difference. Stop trying to act like it doesn't exist, like it isn't a priority. Enough.

I hate the false naivete in this article and in so many of the comments. You all know perfectly well what's going on, yet you pretend to be confused and surprised. I would expect better.

The NFL wants the HOF inductions to be a celebratory occasion. That is not an unreasonable wish.

The whole concussion and post-career trauma question is huge, and they are fully aware of it (finally) - but they also know that if one person speaks about this, it will become the focus of the event, and detract from the well-deserved celebrations of the other inductees and the positive light it shines on the NFL. You may think this is inappropriate, but you cannot claim not to understand why the NFL, or any organization, would not want it!

We all understand that if Junior Seau had not had the football-related problems he'd had, if there had not been a law-suit on-going against the NFL, if, for example, he'd instead died in a tragic car-accident, almost certainly Sydney would have been allowed to speak.

Any organization does the same. They make the most stringent rules possible, in the knowledge that they can always choose to relax them (and nobody will complain), but that it will be very difficult to make them tougher ... if there were no rule about relatives not speaking, they would not have had any real option but to allow her to speak, and they would have had no leverage in limiting the content of her speech.

They would be stupid to change this rule, and the author understands this.

By preventing the family from speaking, the NFL created an immense amount of publicity about the concussive injuries suffered by players. Nothing makes me more interested in something than someone trying to keep it a secret.

We need to get over the fantasy that the N.F.L. and M.L.B. (or Apple, Facebook, and Google for that matter) are different from other cartels and corporations. Just because we may like their products, it does not mean they are better, nicer, more honest, more fair, more open than CitiBank, Blackwater, and Goldman Sachs. They are there to make money, and anything else is just pretty wrapping paper and public relations to sell their products.

No more than the banks take responsibility for actions leading to the economic collapse, no more than oil drillers take responsibility for pollution, no more than cigarette companies take responsibility for addicting people will the N.F.L. take responsibility for concussions or M.L.B. take responsibility for steroid use. The thing they all share in common -- in addition to not taking responsibility -- is that in each case they were aware of and consciously promoted these things before they became public scandals.

Such a sweet girl. You wouldn't think that she has slammed the NFL, on national TV, based on the allegedly inadequate settlement offered to the family. The NFL, she claimed, insulted the family by offering them only $4 million in a case whose outcome remains unclear. The way the settlement is structured Ms, Seau would have received nothing. The wrongful death suit she is pursuing allows payment of millions directly to her. What a sweetheart.

Living here is San Diego; I found it puzzling why she was not allowed to speak of her father's death. Football may have played a direct role in his death.

Allow the truth or fix the problem with all of the technology that is available. But cost is more important to the game and so is its name. The truth did not stand a chance of being heard on Saturday night at the Pro Football HOF.

If Sydney Seau proved anything Saturday night at the Pro Football Hall of Fame, it was that the relatives of deceased inductees like her father, Junior, deserve to make a speech at their enshrinement ceremonies.

Huge grammar error in the very first sentence! Junior isn't the relative...he's the deceased. Sheesh.

The NFL, and now its outlier, have proven on far too many occasions that they could screw up a butter sandwich...

Sydney, you did #55 very proud.

NFL and by extension HOF: petty and small-minded

More evidence that football leadership is completely out of touch with the public.

Pro Football Hall of SHAME for not treating relatives of deceased inductees equally with relatives of living inductees. Both groups could be given the same guidelines on their speeches.

Junior Seau would be very proud of his daughter.mi think he would be less proud of his former employer. On a day when I read stories about the NFL - Frank Gifford's unexpected death, Ms. Seau's marvelous 'acceptance' speech she would have given, details about Mr. Seau's our demise - a thought crossed my mind: that the NFL continues only to focus on its own image and finances and to ignore the health, welfare, and well-being of its employees, even to the silly exclusion of anyone speaking for those who have passed on to the next world.

Pity. The NFL is a powerful, important part of our lives and they could have - should have - done better, especially considering the result.

His daughter is a class act, he would have been proud!

Does anybody really seriously think these days that American-style football, as well as boxing, are not needlessly brutal and dangerous undertakings that, but for the money involved, no modern civilized society should encourage? The NFL policies and denials and disingenuous charades become ever more shameful.

THank you Sydney for the perfect response, delivered with dignity, grace, and love. We all have a lot to learn from you.

Thank you for publishing Sydney Seau's tribute to her father. It is astonishing, no-unforgiveable that the NFL would not let her speak. He was a great athlete and a great person. Whatever infantile reasoning went into their decision it is a disgrace. Thank you for trying to make up for their hateful decision.

Her father would have been so proud of her.

Shame on the NFL for being afraid of a 15 year old girl who loved her father. As did all Charger fans.

RIP, Junior. You'll never be forgotten and your football skills were only a small part of why. A remarkable man and a "Super" Charger. Thank you so much, Sydney, for capturing what we all feel. We're proud of you, too.

Sydney Seau is a remarkable young woman. Her father is proud of her.

I watched the shot clip of Sidney eulogizing her father. It brought tears to my eyes. All I can say is the Hall of Shame (and the NFL that actually controls it) are … well, I'm not allowed to use the proper and completely expressive word here, but lets settle for shame. They, the Hall and the NFL, set a new standard for how low can you go.

There is what Jon Stewart would call an "organic" angle to this today, especially on a day that Frank Gifford's death was announced. His head injury was legendary, but he played on and on. Head injuries and health care are very low priorities, and no priority at all when money is involved.

Amazing Grace! The relatives of the Charleston massacre demonstrated it to the nation and the Confederate battle flag was finally lowered and placed in a museum. Sydney Seau also has it and now let's hope the National Football League's Hall of Fame will put also its no speech policy by relatives on behalf deceased inductees in the museum as well.

This article brings up a question of how Junior Seau knew to ask his daughter to speak for him. Did he somehow know that he wouldn't be able to do it himself? Maybe he already felt like Mr. Tingelhoff, who didn't want to speak for himself. It is so tragic that a sport disables it's players, so they can't speak for themselves.

Soon the Football Hall of Fame will face a tougher question: What will it do with a living inductee who, due to a battered brain, can't even speak for himself?

Sydney Seau was exceptionally impressive in her remarks, very classy, never mind that many of us would have been eager to hear what was really in her and her family's thoughts. One imagines more than a few Shield suits were greatly relieved after her "non-speech" concluded, too. The NFL once again congratulated itself for offering compassion when in reality it bowed to pressure; it did not want Ms. Seau anywhere near that Canton stage unless it knew exactly what she intended to say. Its insecurity on CTE and related head injuries that may derive from playing its game remains palpable and with good reason. There is still a lot we don't know and may never know.

Thus far, as Mr. Sandomir notes, the NFL has avoided the awkward, embarrassing spectacle of having one of its greatest players speak about the unspeakable; one has to imagine that its day of reckoning is coming. What would Junior Seau have said had he lived indeed. We could definitely feel for Mick Tingelhoff and his decidedly mixed emotions. Yes, the day is a great celebration, but it should not also be a whitewash. A Hall of Fame speech, in whatever sport, is a real opportunity for those who seize it to give voice to something more than merely those who helped them get to the pinnacle of their profession. Many years ago, on a separate but crucial issue, Ted Williams did just that at his turn at the podium in Cooperstown. And there is no doubt it made a difference.

The Football Hall of Fame executives are acting like autocrats everywhere: No voice is allowed to opposition. We see it developing in Hungary over several years, now in India under the Hindu nationalists, and we see it in American football, to our shame. (And need I remind people of the "free speech" cages in Boston at the Democratic presidential nominating convention in 2004?)

Sydney Seau is a wonder who needed to speak for her father and for her broad family and for herself. The Football Hall of Fame executives acted shamefully in denying us such a voice. The New York Times has acted grandly in allowing us to hear Sydney.