Former Republican vice-presidential candidate and future TV judge Sarah Palin made news this weekend while campaigning for Donald Trump in Wisconsin. It wasn’t that she is the last woman in America who isn’t Trump’s wife or daughter who supports him. Nor was it a particularly hateful line that stood out from the rest of the standard attacks and catchphrases that tumble out in her uniquely baffling syntax.
Palin made news by making a good point. About sports.
In a meandering speech in Milwaukee on Friday night that sounded like she made it up on the fly moments after shotgunning a can of ice cold freedom – typical Palin fare – she opened with some Green Bay Packers pandering.
“It’s always so good to be in Wisconsin, getting off the airplane today as I’m walking through the airport and seeing all the green and gold and green – and gold till I’m dead and cold – paraphernalia everywhere, it’s Packers.”
It is Packers. She was right. So far so good. Later on Palin bashed the non-Trumps of the Republican party for signing off on President Obama’s trade deal and for supporting immigration: “What are you thinking, candidates? What are you thinking when you go ahead and you’re actually asking for more immigrants, even inducing and seducing them with gift baskets. Come on over the border and there’s a gift basket with teddy bears and soccer balls. What are you thinking?”
I’m thinking that sports in Wisconsin would be in desperate shape without foreign-born workers like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Wily Peralta. But before going in on Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan and President Obama for pallin’ around with ideas and policies she doesn’t like, Palin spoke about former Packers guard Jerry Kramer.
Did she rip him for dedicating his life to protecting Bart Starr, while doing nothing to block Mexicans from flooding through the border line of scrimmage? Nope. She said he should be in the Hall of Fame.
And she is right. Sarah Palin is right.
Kramer, now 80, played 11 years for the Packers from 1958 to 1968 and is on every short list of best players not in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton.
He made three Pro Bowls, won five NFL championships, two Super Bowls and was named to both the NFL’s 1960s All-Decade Team and the league’s 50th Anniversary Team. In fact, he’s the only member of that 50th Anniversary Team not in the Hall of Fame. The NFL’s own TV network ranked him the very best player not in Canton.
In addition to being an integral part of Vince Lombardi’s famed “Packer Sweep,” in which Kramer and fellow guard Fuzzy Thurston pulled and led the running back going around the line of scrimmage, Kramer also spent time kicking for the Packers.
And he did it at 6ft 3in, 245lbs a giant for the NFL of 50 years ago. JJ Watt is a huge and talented athlete in today’s NFL, but he’s not knocking down field goals for the Texans. Kramer led the NFL in field goal percentage in 1962 and finished fourth in the league in scoring a season later, ahead of Jim Brown. In the famed Ice Bowl game against Dallas in 1967, Starr followed Kramer’s block to score the game-winning touchdown.
Sarah Palin would never be called a social justice warrior, but even she can recognize the injustice of Kramer not being in Canton. The former Alaska governor implored the candidates campaigning in Wisconsin to take a “unity pledge” to push for Kramer’s induction, going as far as posting a call to action on Facebook to her 4.6 million followers.
Palin’s connection to Packers legend, as she stated in her remarks, is that her father played high school football with Kramer in Idaho and then followed his career from then on at the University of Idaho and in the NFL. Palin studied communications and journalism at Idaho and was a TV sportscaster in Anchorage, Alaska. Her background and her on-point comments about Kramer make one wonder how things might be different in America if she had stayed in sports broadcasting. She was in way over her head running for national office, but “You betcha!” would’ve been a great catchphrase to highlight every made Steph Curry three-pointer on “SportsCenter.”
ESPN would have a female star to match with Stephen A Smith and Skip Bayless and American politics might be less toxic and divisive. Sadly, that’s a world we’ll never know.
What we do know is that Kramer’s Hall of Fame future rests in the hands of the Hall’s seniors committee, which selects two old-timers for consideration each year. In August they picked Ken Stabler and Dick Stanfel, two no-doubt accomplished players, but men who passed away last year. If death is earning voter sympathy, Kramer being punished for continuing to stay alive only makes his snub more unjust. The Seniors Committee should be trying to get deserving players in the Hall before they pass away, not after. You can’t mail a gold jacket to the big locker room in the sky.
The general consensus on Kramer’s continued exclusion from the Hall is that voters feel there are too many Packers already enshrined. The current count is 24, with Brett Favre going in this year. But as Palin and her party would no doubt stress, the “haves” shouldn’t be punished because they’re more successful than everyone else.
The Republican primary season has been an embarrassing chapter in American history. But if nothing else positive comes out of it, maybe Palin’s comments will help get Jerry Kramer in the Hall of Fame. It’s not a thriving republic with talented men and women inspiring the citizenry as they vie for the highest office in the land, but it’s something. And even Kramer doesn’t get into Canton, at least we can all say we remember that one day when Sarah Palin said something that was right.
