Take a peek inside pro football's attic

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CANTON, Ohio -- Located just off Interstate 77 in northeast Ohio, the Pro Football Hall of Fame houses the history of the NFL and its greatest stars.

Montana.

Payton.

For 47 years, it's been holy ground for the football fan. It's a place where fans can lose themselves in more than 83,000 square feet of photos, highlights and artifacts of their favorite teams and players. It's a place where moments from the earliest days of the league to the modern era remain alive.

But beyond what fans see on television and read in magazines or online, what is it that we don't know about the Hall of Fame? For every display of Hall of Famers Jim Brown, Dan Marino and Otto Graham, there are lesser-known players who have shaped pro football just as much as the stars.

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AP Photo/NASAA display honoring astronaut Leland Melvin is one of the many unknown gems found in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Still, this museum features a display honoring a player who never once played a down in a regular-season game.

What makes him special? Melvin is the first former NFL player to become an astronaut and fly on a mission in space.

Melvin was an 11th-round pick of the Detroit Lions in the 1986 draft. The wide receiver from the University of Richmond was an honorable mention All-American in his junior and senior seasons and graduated as the Spiders' all-time leader in receptions (198) and yards (2,669).

He never made it out of training camp. Nagging hamstring injuries curtailed his time with the Lions and later the Dallas Cowboys and the Canadian Football League's Toronto Argonauts.

Even though his football career ended, Melvin had a great fallback: his brain. An NCAA Division I Academic All-American at Richmond as a chemistry major, he later earned a master's degree in materials science engineering from the University of Virginia. He eventually joined NASA.

For nearly 11 days in November 2009, Melvin was a part of NASA's space mission crew from Flight STS-129. It was the 31st flight to the International Space Station and the second shuttle mission for Melvin. He took Lions and Cowboys jerseys, a football with every Hall of Famer's name inscribed on it and a coin that eventually would be used in Super Bowl XLIV.

"The jerseys were stored in the mid deck," Melvin said in a phone interview. "Once we reached space, it felt like I had four or five linebackers on my chest."

While his NFL career never quite took off the way he wanted it to, Melvin, now 46, has used his platform as an athlete and astronaut to help kids. He's participating in the Pro Football Hall Of Fame Festival this weekend to celebrate the Class of 2010's induction. Melvin has helped launch NASA's Summer of Innovation program, designed to help students achieve success in science, math and technology.

What comparisons can he make between football and space exploration?

"Going from college to the pros, it's another level," Melvin said. "It's just like going from a research scientist to becoming an astronaut. There's teamwork involved. There are very strong parallels."

It's the lesser-known gems like Leland Melvin who make Canton pro football's ultimate destination, from the smallest detail to the most well-known highlight.

We know about the busts. We know about the footballs that are kept there to mark notable games, broken records and milestone achievements. We know about the enshrinement ceremony that takes place every summer in Fawcett Stadium adjacent to the Hall.

What else is there? We decided to find out for ourselves. Call it a scavenger hunt or deep investigative reporting; ESPN.com was given full access for a day in Canton. It was an opportunity to sift through all the nooks of the Hall and see what we could find hidden inside pro football's attic.

Contracts of Marion Motley and Bill Willis

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Tony Spinelli/ESPN.comOn display are the contracts of Marion Motley and Bill Willis, who broke the color barrier in professional football.

These two contracts represent a historic moment in pro football history. From 1919 to 1933, a smattering of black players played for several integrated pro teams. But during the era bridging the Great Depression and World War II, there were no black players in the NFL. When the rival AAFC emerged in the late 1940s, NFL teams started to integrate again.

Both players would enjoy Hall of Fame careers: Motley was inducted in 1968 and Willis in 1977.

Immaculate Reception turf

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Tony Spinelli/ESPN.comThe Immaculate Reception was a key moment of the Steelers' run in the 1970s. Franco Harris was able to secure the turf from the exact spot of his catch.

Arguably one of the best plays in NFL history, Franco Harris' Immaculate Reception gave the Pittsburgh Steelers an improbable win over the Oakland Raiders in a 1972 AFC divisional playoff game.

Harris wanted to maintain a piece of that history, so after studying photos, the running back was able to pinpoint the exact spot where he made the catch in Three Rivers Stadium.

However, what he didn't know was that stadium employees would be removing the turf at season's end. The Hall of Famer arrived just as the field crew was replacing the turf and was able to cut out the spot and grab his piece of history.

Football's 'birth certificate'

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Tony Spinelli/ESPN.comFootball's "birth certificate" shows the first evidence of a player being paid for on-field performance.

In 1892, the Allegheny Athletic Association fielded the first professional team. William Heffelfinger, the first professional football player, was paid $500 to play in a game against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club.

The contract shown here is the first visual proof of a pay-for-performance agreement.

While replicas are on display at the Hall, the original contract is located in a special archives section in Canton. To preserve the document, the page was sent to a conservator and was reinforced with Japanese paper.

Leland Melvin display

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Tony Spinelli/ESPN.comNot all players are recognized for on-the-field achievements. Leland Melvin became the first former player to become an astronaut.

Melvin would later begin a career in the space program, and in 1998, he became an astronaut. A veteran of two space flights, STS-122 in 2008, and STS-129 in 2009, Melvin has logged more than 565 hours in space.

Red Grange's broadcast 'guide'

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Tony Spinelli/ESPN.comWhen working as a color analyst for NBC, Red Grange used this device to keep track of who was on the field.

Before the computer age, when monitors assisted broadcast teams in keeping track of which players were on the field, Grange used a specially made board to keep up with the action so he could accurately relay it to his viewers. Each player's number was written on a cork and placed in the positional holes carved in the board for offense and defense.

As players would be rotated in and out of the game, Grange would be able to keep track of who was on the field by simply replacing the corks.

Red Grange's ice block tongs

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Tony Spinelli/ESPN.comWhen he wasn't playing, Grange worked part time as an ice toter, earning the nickname "The Wheaton Ice Man."

Grange, also known as the "Wheaton Ice Man," would not only use this job as a moneymaker, but the ice toting helped him build core strength when he wasn't playing football.

His name is engraved on the tongs.

Giants' defensive game plan from Super Bowl XXV

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Tony Spinelli/ESPN.comBill Belichick's defensive game plan helped the Giants' defense slow the Bills in Super Bowl XXV.

The Giants' defense, led by Pro Bowlers Erik Howard, Pepper Johnson and Lawrence Taylor, eliminated the big plays and beat Buffalo 20-19. New York dominated the time of possession with a Super Bowl-record 40 minutes, 33 seconds.

Scrapbook of archives

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Tony Spinelli/ESPN.comThe Beadle Book of Football is widely considered the first written publication on the game.

Located in the archives of the Hall of Fame is a scrapbook of news clippings from media across the country. From columns to cartoon illustrations, the scrapbooks give a detailed look at how the league was covered in the early to mid-20th century, and show a contrast in the traditional journalism of old versus the new media of today.

Beadle's Book of Football

Dime novels became popular in the late 19th century and early 20th century. These books were popularized by not only their price, but the telling of Civil War stories and westerns.

One of the most popular literary "franchises" during this time was the Beadle's Dime Novel series. One of the first known books on football was the Dime Book of Cricket, published in 1866. While the first two-thirds of the novel are on cricket, the final third focuses on football. The section is mainly on the rules of the game and focused primarily on soccer and rugby, which at the time were more popular than pro football.

The Hall of Fame has one of only six known copies of the publication.

Jamar Hudson is an editor at ESPN.com. Thanks to Joe Horrigan, VP Communications/Exhibits, Pro Football Hall Of Fame, and the Hall's staff for granting ESPN.com access.

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