“Faith in Everybody and Fingers Crossed:” How Canton Hopes to Keep a Secret

(EDITOR’S NOTE: To listen to the Jim Porter interview, click on the following link: Ep 92: Pro Football Hall of Fame President Jim Porter | Spreaker Ep 92: Pro Football Hall of Fame President Jim Porter | Spreaker)

Pro Football Hall-of-Fame voters this week chose Canton’s Class of 2022, only nobody knows who’s in and who’s not. That’s because the Hall can’t and won’t divulge the inductees until they’re revealed on the NFL Honors Show Feb. 10.

That’s three weeks away. OK, but now the question: How does anybody hold a secret for three weeks?

We’re about to find out … if we don’t find out first how quickly the news leaks. It’s a tricky waiting game, and somehow it worked last year. That was a two-and-half-week time lapse. This is a three-week interval and good luck.

Loose lips sink Honors Show bits.

“Three weeks is a long time,” new Hall president Jim Porter conceded on the latest “Eye Test for Two” podcast. “You can sit in a meeting and somebody will say something to one person, and you know how the game goes: It’s the next person and the next person and the next person. By the time you get to the fifth person the story’s changed, and it’s out there.”

But that didn’t happen a year ago. When the Honors Show aired, exuberant inductees were seen answering The Knock at their front doors by then-president and CEO David Baker. That happened well in advance of the Honors Show, yet somehow the news didn’t leak.

But this time? There are eight potential Hall-of-Fame inductees, along with dozens of family and friends who will know. That’s a lot of people to share a secret that is supposed to survive until next month.

“I do worry about that,” said Porter. “But we had a nice conversation with the selectors. I have trust that they’re going to hold up with their word. But it’s not just the selectors. If there is a little bit of something that gets out there, there are other people who have to know for us to do what we need to do for the surprises. So faith in everybody, and fingers crossed.”

Maybe that works, but call me skeptical. OK, call me cynical. I just don’t see how.

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Porter does. Because he’s been through this before. Granted, this was his first board-of-selectors meeting, so it was the first time he was in the room when finalists were elected. But he’s actually seen results before when the public has not … and he was able to keep them secret.

That will take a little explaining, but Porter was only too happy to explain.

“My Mom was a travel agent back in the ‘70s and ‘80s,” he said, looking back to his years growing up in Canton. “Back in those days, (for) the 15 finalists you would make airline flights for all them to go to Hawaii for the Pro Bowl. But then, as soon as the class was about to be announced, she had to go and cancel the ones who had to wait maybe another year or two.

“So I was one of the first ones in the world who knew it first back then, too. And I’d sit by my Mom’s side, waiting for that phone call to come. So it’s a little surreal now to be in the position that I’m in.”