HOF Impact for Warner

The phone call came a few weeks ago, but the news has still not quite sunk in for Kurt Warner. He is now a Pro Football Hall of Famer.

“Not yet,” he laughed in a recent interview. “It still feels a little bit foreign, but obviously, what a tremendous honor to be elected. Looking forward to the process and looking forward to the platform to hopefully use that to impact more people and we’ll see, we’ll see if it ever sinks in. But I’m tremendously honored.”

This was the third time Warner had made it as a finalist for consideration.

“I think more than anything for me, it was really a reflection,” said Warner. “It wasn’t like it hit me and it justified more or it defined me. I always felt like that when I played between the lines, that I had played as well as anybody. It was never a confidence thing or was very proud of what I had done when I was between the lines.”

Of the 15 modern era quarterbacks elected to the Hall of Fame over the last 30 years, none had a better completion percentage (65.5%), yards attempted (7.95) or yards per game (260.9) than Warner.

“I think it was more of a reflection thing,” he continued. “The route that I took to get here and then the recognition that went into the impact that I had on the game or the impact that I had on the organizations that I was with. That’s really what I think sunk in–that people recognized.

“Because when you go on this quest of course, when you’re young, it’s all about how many championships can I win and what kind of awards can I get? And can I find myself in the Hall of Fame? But you find yourself somewhere along the way–or at least I did, saying what kind of impact do I leave? What kind of impact do I have on my teammates and the organizations I was with and the game as a whole. To me, that’s what the Hall of Fame represents–it represents impact.

“That impact can look a lot of different ways. But for me, I believe it was impact on how we helped change the game in St. Louis with the way we played and more importantly for me, the kind of impact that I left on the places that I was on the teams, the organizations instilling a confidence or a belief with those teams that maybe they never had before. That to me is what’s special about it and to me,  what I take away from being elected as a Hall of Famer.”

Warner has made the decision on who will present him, but is keeping it quiet until he has a chance to speak with that person.

As a player and now as an analyst on the NFL Network, Warner has never shied away from answering questions–whether about the game, his play, his faith, or other beliefs. Most embrace this about him, some have taken issue.

Social media did not exist when Warner played so he never had to deal with a situation similar to that of St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Dexter Fowler, who recently received negative reaction to sharing his perspective about how the travel ban affects his wife, who has family in Iran.

“There’s no question,” said Warner if things may have been different if social media existed when he played. “When it comes to social media there’s two sides of it. You look at it from one standpoint and say ‘man, what a blessing that would’ve been to further some of the things I was trying to further’ whether it be the Foundation or the work that we were doing and connecting and having impact.

“But then, there’s the opposite side…you realize in this business very quickly, regardless of what you do,  it’s hard to please everybody. So now when you’ve got hundreds of thousands of people following you–and following you for different reasons: some for what you believe, some for the family guy that you are, some for just the player you are or team that you’re on. You make statements like that and you’re not going to make everybody happy.

We all know that when you don’t have to put a face to the voice, it’s so much easier and you’re so much more bold to throw stuff out there. So you have to have thick skin and you have to understand how to handle some of those insults. What do you do with it if somebody disagrees with you and you have to be willing to accept that part of it–that we’re all different.”

Fowler handled his situation with a smile and gave away game tickets on Twitter, while standing by his beliefs. Warner also uses humor on his Twitter account.

“We all see things different,” continued Warner. “And somebody’s not wrong or bad because they don’t necessarily see it as I do. But I think it’s so easy on social media to kind of attack and to feel attacked. Then you want to respond and there’s some ugly things that can happen through social media because of the way it’s set up. So, I think you have to be very, very cautious and very, very smart with what you’re trying to do and make sure it’s a sense of engagement, as opposed to a sense of trying to tell people how it should be on there. But it’s a very difficult thing to do and we all know it can get out of hand.”

The 2017 Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony will be held August 5th in Canton, Ohio.

photo credit: Scott Rovak-USA TODAY Sports, L.G. Patterson/AP