Inductees

He not only had dreamed the dream but lived it – of making it to the National Football League after climbing out of a steel mill town and a small college – and yet it almost ended as soon as it began.

In 1960, just a day before Hall and the Pittsburgh Steelers were to open the season against a new team called the Dallas Cowboys, the Army came calling.

“That night, while my teammates were playing Dallas, I was laying in a military bunk at Fort Leonard Wood,” Hall recalled. “I thought my career was over at that point.”

However, the Boston Patriots in the newly formed American Football League offered a chance some six months later, and Hall rose to the top as a record-setting defensive back who ultimately was voted to the Patriots’ All-Decade Team of the 1960s.

What a career it was, both at Missouri Valley and in Boston, and it’s why the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame is proud to induct Hall with the Class of 2017.

At Missouri Valley College in Marshall, he played in four postseason bowl games, including two Tangerine Bowls, and earned all-conference honors before graduating in 1959.

Eventually, he played for the Patriots from 1961-1967, along the way earning a spot on the All-AFL teams of 1963 and 1964 and setting three of the Patriots’ interceptions records – career (29), season (11) and a game (3). His career INTs record stood until the Patriots’ Raymond Clayborn broke it in 1986. Hall also was voted to the New England Patriots’ 35^th Anniversary Team by the Boston media in 1995.

And yet to think that Hall’s career almost vanished after Uncle Sam called for duty. After all, he had joined the Steelers in 1959 as a low (28^th-round) draft pick.

“I spent six months on active duty in Fort Riley, Kansas but, at that time, the American Football League was forming,” Hall said. “And then the phone rang.”

On the other end of the line was the general manager of the Boston Patriots, who extended an offer.

Overall, it was quite a journey for Hall, who had grown up near the Mississippi River in Granite City, Illinois, spring-boarding from there to an improbable career.

You see, Hall had never played football until his freshman year in high school, and earned the final roster spot that season only after beating out another teenager in a wind sprint.

By the time he graduated in 1955 – and having played with helmets without facemasks – Hall was a three-year varsity letterman, earned All-State selection and, at one time, was the KMOX Player of the Week. Coach Warren Harris set him up for success.

“He took the game seriously,” Hall said, “and he put the intensity in me.”

Still, Hall figured the road would end at that point.

“Granite City Steel Company was there and it was a big manufacturing area. A lot of us figured we would go work there,” Hall said. “Nobody in my family had ever gone to college, so it didn’t matter to me.”

However, when Missouri Valley College offered a scholarship, Hall headed to north central Missouri and played for coach Volney Ashford, who at one point suspended Hall for a spring semester for an off-the-field issue but welcomed him back the next season.

“I’m forever appreciative of that,” Hall said. “He didn’t give up on me.”

After Hall’s senior season, Ashford invited him to the All-American Game, a battle of small college and major college players. That’s where scouts spotted Hall, one of four Valley players selected by pro football teams within two years.

In Pittsburgh, he mentored under defensive backs coach Harry Gilmer, a former University of Alabama halfback. In Boston, coach Mike Holovak and assistants Chuck Webber, Fred Bruney and Marion Campbell guided Hall, who also credits the defensive lines for his INTs.

The Patriots were 9-4-1 in Hall’s first two seasons, and then 10-3-1 in his fourth. Overall, he played in 90 games, with a team-record 11 interceptions in the 1964 season.

After retiring from pro football, Hall taught and coached football in the Kansas City and Liberty school districts as he and his wife, Jayne, raised daughter Tracey and sons Clay and Chris. His 1971 and 1972 Liberty teams won the Suburban Conference, and he was named the 1971 Conference Coach of the Year.

“I didn’t do it alone,” Hall said of his career. “I had a lot of help. I was in the right place at the right time. I just had a great group to work with.”