The College Football Hall of Fame includes some of the most legendary players to ever play the sport. Guys such as Tim Tebow, Herschel Walker and John Heisman revolutionized college football during their era and made the game what it is today. But there is one figure that has made its way to the College Football Hall of Fame that hasn’t recorded one touchdown or one sack or even played one down of football.
The Goodyear Blimp was elected into the Hall of Fame earlier this year and the exhibit will open to the public on Friday, Dec. 13. Popculture.com was on hand for the unveiling of the exhibit and Kirk Herbstreit, former Ohio State quarterback and co-host of the ESPN show College Gameday, was on hand to introduce it.
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“I’ve had a chance to be with Goodyear really for about a year to celebrate this exhibit,” Herbstreit said. “I’ve had an interesting view, growing up as a kid, go to a college football game, you look up, you see the blimp, you know it’s a big game. You know it’s on TV.”
The Goodyear Blimp has been there for every big game for the last 65 years. And because of that, it becomes the first non-player or non-coach to be entered in the Hall of Fame. And it all started with the 1955 Rose Bowl when the television network requested aerial coverage for the parade and the game itself. Since then, the blimp has covered over 2,000 sports and entertainment events.
“I did that at Ohio State for a number of years,” Herbstreit said when talking about seeing the blimp at Ohio State games. “And then I became a player. Played at Ohio State, played in big games and sometimes a blimp wouldn’t be up there and you knew it wasn’t a big game. Then you play Michigan or one the nationally televised games and it was really cool to know you were playing the game of the week and of lot of eyes were going to be on you.
“And then I became a broadcaster ended up calling the ABC Saturday Night game and the blimp again was in my life.”
What fans will get when they view the exhibit is a new way to experience game day. It will feature actual blimp artifacts, including an original broadcast window and video footage from some of college football’s s most exciting matchups. And with Herbstreit introducing the exhibit along with Dennis Adamovich, CEO of the Chick-fil-A College Football Hall of Fame and Todd Macsuga, Goodyear’s general manager of Brand Marketing, the blimp will continue to be at some of college football’s biggest games moving forward.
“This is not the end of the blimp,” Herbstreit added. The blimp will go on …For me, I had quite the relationship with the blimp. This is cool for me to see this.”
