Jerome Bettis Elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame

Old Man Mike

Old Man Mike

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My Mom's favorite player --- as a lifelong ND and later Steelers fan, Jerome with his Teddy Bear persona was inevitably her favorite. One of my big sporting boneheads was seeing him at Pittsburgh airport and not thinking to get her his autograph --- sorry Mama, mea culpa.
 
dshans

dshans

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Old Man Mike said:
My Mom's favorite player --- as a lifelong ND and later Steelers fan, Jerome with his Teddy Bear persona was inevitably her favorite. One of my big sporting boneheads was seeing him at Pittsburgh airport and not thinking to get her his autograph --- sorry Mama, mea culpa.
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But I'm sure she still loved you ...
 
A

ARALOU

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Glad he got in, well deserved. We have a saying that if someone asks you is "so and so" a hall of famer, and you have to think about it for a second, then the answer is no. I have no hesitation with him or Tim Brown.
 
Booslum31

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Not sure what game it was at ND Stadium. But our seats were right next to the tunnel and as Jerome was exiting the field we were yelling to him and he took off his wrist bands and threw them up to us. i caught one of them and was immediately grossed out by how soaked it was with with sweat. i tossed it up in the air and caused a big rumble as about five guys started rumbling for it. Good times...loved Jerome!
 
zelezo vlk

zelezo vlk

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I really don't understand why so many people think that the Bus didn't deserve it. Congrats to him.
 
kmoose

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zelezo vlk said:
I really don't understand why so many people think that the Bus didn't deserve it. Congrats to him.
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One of the only criticisms you can come up with against him is that he only averaged 3.9 yards per carry, which really is at the bottom end of the great running backs and I think is the lowest of any RB in the Hall. But he was really a fullback playing tailback. And how many fullbacks averaged 3.9 a carry?
 
ulukinatme

ulukinatme

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Loved the Bus, favorite running back that played in the NFL. To date, I've only been to one NFL game, and it was the Steelers vs. the Bengals in that infamous '05 playoff where Carson Palmer went out with that knee injury. I didn't care about the Steelers all that much really, I was just there to see Bettis play. The Cinci crowd sure was hostile though, even though I was pretty reserved and polite. Several fans wanted to pick fights even before Palmer went down, and some guy smacked me in the back of the head for taking a towel they were giving out to all fans at the gate (Towel wasn't even for me, it was for my mom's friend who was a Bengal). In any case, it was a great way for the Bus to finish his career, a nice ring won in his home town of Detroit.
 
Redbar

Redbar

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Congratulations to Jerome, great guy and the toughest guy on the field. Saw him play many times at ND, but the game that stands out to me most is when we all got onboard and rode "The Bus" to victory in the Sugar Bowl against Florida. We were down in the first half and the Florida fans were sure things were only going to get worse, until Jerome decided it would take more than one or two of them to get him down. Dominant performance. The original "Beast Mode".
 
ulukinatme

ulukinatme

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I played football in high school, but I never got to touch the ball since I was a lineman. Some buddies would play full contact, no pads on the weekends sometimes though. Sometimes we'd have enough for 11 on 11 if people recruited enough people to play. On those weekends I got to step outside the lineman facade and do my best Bettis impression, he was my hero. I wasn't huge, 220 and svelte back then, but I was bigger than most of the guys I was playing against (Wrestlers, soccer players, and non-athletes). In any case, these guys were all quicker than me, so I'd use my power to break tackles and drag guys for extra yards. It worked pretty well...if I would have had the hands of the Bus. The problem is when you're slowly dragging 2-3 guys at a time it leaves yourself open to hammer shots as guys try to knock the ball loose. I still got across the goal line a number of times though, it was kind of nice being in the shoes of a ball carrier instead of the often thankless job I had Friday nights in the trenches.
 
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