(Pictured above: Early National Football Foundation leader and World War II hero General Douglas MacArthur accepts the 1959 NFF Gold Medal at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York during the Second NFF Annual Awards Dinner.)

Founded in 1947, the National Football Foundation (NFF) & College Hall of Fame is a non-profit educational organization that runs programs designed to use the power of amateur football in developing scholarship, citizenship and athletic achievement in young people.

Celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2022, the NFF now boasts a sparkling, $68 million state-of-the art Chick-fil-A College Football Hall of Fame near Atlanta’s Centennial Park, an extensive NFF National Scholar-Athlete Awards program with the centerpiece William V. Campbell Trophy®, and a local chapter system that stretches from Maine to Hawaii, among many other initiatives to promote the game of football. The NFF Annual Awards Dinner Presented by Las Vegas is the organization’s marquee event that attracts more than 1,600 of the game's most influential supporters to honor those who embody the spirit of the game.
 
“After seven decades, the NFF has survived the test of time and with flying colors,” said NFF President & CEO Steve Hatchell. “The early years tested the mettle of the founders and their resources, but they laid the foundation for a strong organization. Over the years, great military leaders, businessmen, politicians, Hall of Fame players and coaches, media and college administrators have contributed to building an enterprise with an enduring purpose: supporting the good of the game.”
 
“I always say the National Football Foundation represents everything that is right with our great game,” said NFF Chairman and Hall of Fame quarterback Archie Manning. “I think with Steve (Hatchell’s) leadership, we are getting into other areas … goals we have, things we want to do. We have a special group on the board, and I really like what we stand for.”
 

The Early Years

The narrative of the National Football Foundation began at a coffee shop in Syracuse, New York, when Arthur Evans met a local newspaperman to gauge his interest in starting a College Football Hall of Fame.
 
Evans, the associate director of admissions at Manlius, a prestigious college prep school in Syracuse, invited longtime Syracuse Herald-Journal columnist and sports editor, Lawrence J. Skiddy, to lunch. They determined Skiddy did not have the time. Evans would carry the ball.
 
Less than three months after their lunch, the incorporation of the National Football Shrine and Hall of Fame occurred on December 8, 1947, in central New York. Seven men, including Evans and Skiddy, attended when a charter of incorporation from the State of New York was secured. A year later a board was formed, with legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice elected president. Most significantly, Army coach and athletics director Earl "Red" Blaik joined the board.
 
The first office site was in Syracuse. Without a brick and mortar Hall of Fame, and little money, the hard-driving Evans took the job upon himself to get the college football and business communities behind his pet project. Evans died in 1951, but the organization survived his death, reorganizing in 1954 as the National Football Foundation.  

Long before the NFF Annual Awards Dinner took hold as one of sports’ most prominent gatherings, Evans headed a search for the site of a College Football Hall of Fame building and offices. In 1948, Rice, from his New York City office, accepted nominations. Rutgers won out in 1949, and the offices moved in 1950 from upstate New York to New Jersey in anticipation of an actual Hall of Fame being built in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on the site of the first recognized college football game between the hosts and Princeton in 1869. The building would never materialize in New Brunswick.
 
Despite the lack of a building, the first College Football Hall of Fame Class was named in 1951, including Walter Camp, Red Grange, Bronko Nagurski, Knute Rockne, Jim Thorpe and Pop Warner. After a two-year absence, the NFF announced its second class of inductees in 1954, the same year the NFF was reorganized with 11 schools named as “founding subscribers”: Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, Manhattan, Michigan, Navy, Notre Dame, Penn, Princeton, Syracuse and Yale.
 

NFF Gains Credibility with LaRoche and MacArthur

Chet LaRoche, a former Yale quarterback and subsequent New York advertising titan at Young & Rubicam, became the organization’s first chairman in 1955. LaRoche laid an organizational blueprint that pretty much has been followed ever since, making him one of the most significant figures in the NFF’s history.
 
LaRoche invited General Douglas MacArthur to become chairman of the association’s National Advisory Board on May 15, 1958. MacArthur remained active in the NFF until his death in 1964. Together, Gen. MacArthur, Blaik and Rice formed a triumvirate of popular figures who served as “guiding” fathers in the NFF’s early years.
 
Rice, perhaps America’s foremost sportswriter of the first half of the 20th century and who served as the NFF’s first president, helped form the original NFF Honors Court in 1951, participating in the selection of the Hall of Fame inductees until his passing in 1954.
 
MacArthur, a World War II hero from the Pacific Theater of operations, became an NFF advocate in the late 1950s and early 1960s, accepting several accolades from the organization and insisting on the building of a Hall as a powerful “symbol” for the NFF.
 
Blaik, the coach of the powerhouse Army teams of the 1940s that Rice often covered in his columns and MacArthur read about in news dispatches during the war, donated the funds to help launch the foundation’s postgraduate scholarship program in 1959, and he chaired the Honors Court in 1961 and 1962.
 
The three were intrinsically intertwined in the America psyche, throughout and after World War II and into the 1950s when the military-industrial complex came to power during the Cold War. Their commitment to the NFF offered credibility and luster to the organization’s efforts.
 

NFF Annual Awards Dinner - A Storied Tradition

The First NFF Annual Awards Dinner took place at the Hotel Astor in New York on October 28, 1958, with 2,000 people packing the grand ballroom. George Murphy, ex-MGM star and former Yale football player, flew from California to be Master of Ceremonies. The Yale Whiffenpoofs sang. Admiral Tom Hamilton, director of Athletics at Pittsburgh, inducted nine new Hall of Famers, and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a West Point football player of '15, took a break as the 1958 election campaign ended to accept the NFF's inaugural Gold Medal.
 
The year 1959 proved momentous for the organization, as the Second NFF Annual Awards Dinner began a streak of 58 consecutive years (1959-2016) it would be held at the fabled Waldorf Astoria in New York. The Red Blaik scholarship program (now the NFF National Scholar-Athlete Awards) began, and the NFF presented General MacArthur with its second Gold Medal. Syracuse claimed the inaugural NFF MacArthur Bowl as the best team in college football, which was named for the general and has been presented to every national champion since. LaRoche also established the blueprint for the NFF’s extensive chapter system, which has grown to 120 chapters in 47 states today and has distributed more than $22 million in scholarships since its inception.
 
The NFF has gone on to award the Gold Meal to six more U.S. presidents and numerous movie stars, business leaders, successful football coaches and players and military giants. In 1966, the NFF added the Distinguished American Award to the Dinner, the same year Blaik claimed the Gold Medal and his player Bill Carpenter (the “Lonesome End”), a Vietnam War hero, accepted the inaugural edition.
 

Draddy and the First College Football Hall of Fame

As the 1960s faded, the NFF still lacked a brick and mortar hall of fame. In 1971, Vincent dePaul Draddy became the second NFF chairman, and he converted a limestone mansion in New York City into the first College Football Hall of Fame. The building also housed the foundation’s offices as the organization continued to explore options to build a more expansive venue.
 
In 1976, the NFF partnered with Taft Broadcasting to break ground on a new facility in Kings Island, Ohio, that was designed specifically as a Hall of Fame. The structure, which opened in August of 1978, significantly expanded the exhibition and event space at the organization’s disposal.
 
Draddy, who moved the NFF offices out of Manhattan to Larchmont, New York, in 1986, oversaw a tenure which included the 1983 launch of the NFF’s highly successful association with the Kickoff Classic in New Jersey, which pitted two outstanding college teams in a season opener. The game lasted 20 years, and it raised significant funds for the organization’s scholarships.
 
Draddy, who made a fortune with the IZOD apparel brand, ruled with an iron fist, and his strong leadership kept the NFF afloat during uncertain economic times. He supported the organization with his own money, and he added some big money board members, including F.M. Kirby (Woolworth Company), Walter Zable (Cubic Corporation), William Spencer (Citicorp) and others, who provided financial support as well.
 
Draddy passed away in 1990 after a 19-year run as NFF chairman. In his memory, the NFF established the Draddy Trophy (now the William V. Campbell Trophy®) the same year, awarding it to the nation’s top scholar-athlete as selected from the NFF’s National Scholar-Athlete Class. Air Force’s Chris Howard claimed the inaugural version, setting in motion a hallowed tradition that continues today.
 

Hanson Launches a New Hall of Fame and New Initiatives

Coca-Cola executive Bill Pearce, who had joined the board in 1978, replaced Draddy as chairman. His tenure ended four years later when he passed away suddenly in 1994. Jon F. Hanson, a highly successful New Jersey real estate executive who had been chairman of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition from 1982-90 and a key player with the Kickoff Classic, stepped in as chairman. He hired former Connecticut and Princeton head football coach Robert Casciola as executive director.
 
On August 25, 1995, the NFF opened the new Hall of Fame in South Bend, Indiana, a moved favored by Hanson as the Hall of Fame had faltered financially in Kings Island. And in 1996, under Hanson’s watch, the NFF extended its inductee pool to the divisional ranks, a decision Hall of Fame Coach Eddie Robinson described as one of the best things to ever happen to college football. A year later in 1997, Hanson moved the NFF offices to Morristown, New Jersey.
 
The Hanson era also witnessed the establishment of several endowed scholarships, which helped the NFF increase the dollar amount of the grants given to scholar-athletes. Among those were two endowments by his friend George Steinbrenner, the New York Yankees owner and an NFF Board Member.
 
Also during Hanson’s tenure, the NFF launched the “Play It Smart” program, which raised more than $22 million from 1998-2009 and reached tens of thousands of at-risk student-athletes over the next decade, helping them with their academics and leadership skills. For his decade-worth of efforts, Hanson received the NFF’s Gold Medal in 2005.
 

Manning, Hatchell and the NFF's Role in Supporting Football's Future

Next, the NFF reversed gears, going outside the family to pick a leader, selecting Steve Hatchell to replace Casciola as president in 2005. Hanson stayed on as chairman for another year before Hall of Famer Ron Johnson, former University of Michigan and New York Giants star, took that spot.
 
The NFF hired Hatchell to change the national perception of the NFF as an East Coast organization. Hatchell had the perfect résumé, having worked as a commissioner in three different leagues (Metro, Southwest, Big 12), and as the executive director of the Orange Bowl.

Under Hatchell, change came rapidly. Early in his tenure, he moved the NFF offices from Morristown, New Jersey, to Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. The move marked the first time the organization had its headquarters outside the New York-New Jersey corridor, and the change physically signaled the NFF’s desire to be more inclusive of schools from all over the country. In 2007, Hall of Famer Archie Manning, former Ole Miss quarterback and New Orleans Saints star, became the NFF chairman, replacing Johnson, who retired because of health reasons.
 
In 2009, the NFF renamed the Draddy Trophy as the William V. Campbell Trophy®, honoring the late Columbia University football player and coach, Silicon Valley business titan and the longest serving NFF Board member at the time.
 
Under Hatchell’s watch, the College Football Hall of Fame moved to Atlanta in 2014, a year after he established the Leadership Hall of Fame that honors prominent leaders across the country and serves as a centerpiece for the NFF’s fundraising efforts. Moving the Hall of Fame from slower-paced South Bend to a new state-of-the art facility in college football hotbed Atlanta was a significant milestone.
 
The academic Hampshire Honor Society (2007, financed by Hanson) and Faculty Athletics Representative Salutes (2011) have been added to the NFF lineup in the last decade as well as numerous corporate partners, including Fidelity Investments and Delta Air Lines.

In recent years, the NFF has launched Future For Football, a cross-platform media campaign to celebrate the positive impact the game of football has made on millions of players, coaches, administrators, volunteers and fans nationwide. The NFF has expanded the NFF High School Showcases to six states, with the free events annually providing thousands of academically eligible high school football players an opportunity for millions of dollars in college scholarships. The NFF also created the Campbell Trophy® Summit, an annual event where all past semifinalists, finalists and winners of the Campbell Trophy® are invited to interact and learn from many of the nation's top entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley CEOs about the lessons that have guided them to highest levels of success.

In 2019, the NFF played a role in celebrating the 150th season of college football. The College Football 150th Anniversary (CFB150) non-profit worked out of the NFF's offices in Irving, Texas, and coordinated numerous initiatives and events, including the creation of a special CFB150 logo that was widely used throughout the season.
 
With increased exposure and new programs in recent years, the NFF is ready to embark on its next 75 years. The future is bright.