Burgum says Theodore Roosevelt could enter Pro Football Hall of Fame

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum used a Theodore Roosevelt library event to float an idea that reaches beyond Canton, Ohio: putting the 26th president in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “I think we’re going to see Theodore Roosevelt inducted,” Burgum said Thursday, adding, “Keep it a secret, keep your fingers crossed, but I think we're going to see Theodore Roosevelt inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.”

The proposal lands because Roosevelt never played football, in part because of bad vision, yet the Hall says he played a critical role in the game’s survival. During the 1905 season, 18 football-related deaths were reported, and Roosevelt personally pushed for reform as critics sought to abolish the sport. In December 1905, he summoned football leaders to the White House in Washington to press for safety changes.

Those reforms helped drive a broader rewrite of the game. The effort led to the creation of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States, now the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and the 1906 rule changes legalized the forward pass, banned dangerous mass formations such as the wedge, and extended the first-down distance from five yards to 10 yards. The Hall has said Roosevelt’s intervention helped save football from collapse.

Burgum’s comment also fits a larger pattern. As North Dakota governor, he backed the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library project and put at least $1 million of his own money into it, underscoring how deeply he has invested in Roosevelt’s political image. That makes the Hall of Fame pitch more than a throwaway line. It is part of a broader effort to recast Roosevelt as a builder of American toughness, a figure whose legacy can still be used to validate a modern story about strength, national character, and sport.

The Hall changed its selection process in early 2024 so a Contributor, defined as someone who made outstanding contributions to professional football in capacities other than playing or coaching, is considered in a distinct category. In October 2025, 21 Contributor candidates advanced one step closer to election for the Hall’s Class of 2026. That procedural opening gives Roosevelt a path he never had before, even if his case rests on influence rather than athletic achievement. Burgum’s remarks suggest that, in the politics of memory, Roosevelt is being treated not just as a president, but as a symbol ready for another turn in the nation’s sports mythology.