Rod Woodson Talks Hall of Fame Weekend, Purdue AD Boast & More with Rich

Rod Woodson has now been a Pro Football Hall of Famer for as long as he was a football player. Seventeen seasons on the field, seventeen years in Canton since the class of 2009.

"I wasn't counting," Woodson told Rich, sitting in a room at the Hall with a photograph of his own induction on the wall behind him.

He was not counting because none of it was ever the plan. Woodson started playing at nine years old in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in Pop Warner, and he had no idea what the Hall of Fame even was.

"To be a Hall of Famer from Fort Wayne, Indiana, never thought about it," he said.

The moment that got him closest to breaking was not the enshrinement itself. It was the reveal in Tampa, when the show surprised him with his family and what felt like his entire neighborhood wearing Woodson jerseys. He said he was trying to hold it together and not cry on television like a little baby, and that by then it had stopped being about him. It was about the mentors who steered a knucklehead kid in the right direction, Eugene Parker and Roosevelt Barnes among them, his coaches in Pittsburgh and at Purdue, and his wife of 35 years.

Woodson slipped out of the Ray Nitschke luncheon to do the interview, and that room got him too.

"This one was a tear jerker," he said. "I did everything I could not to cry in front of the guys."

He would not say what was said in there, because nobody does. Hall of Famers only, plus the people serving the food. The incoming class is allowed in, Woodson noted, precisely because they are not Hall of Famers yet. No jackets. There were health scares among the guys, some emotional stories, and a first speaker who put the whole thing in perspective. Woodson called it the best one he has been a part of.

"You got all these guys who are so excellent in football, all manly and man and man and man," Rich said. "And they're all breaking down."

Woodson is also working with NFL Alumni Health and the DEA on the One Pill Can Kill campaign for a third straight year, and his message to young people is blunt. Drug-related deaths lead the causes for ages 18 to 44 in this country, and fentanyl does not require much. Two or three grains of salt worth will do it, mixed into a weight loss pill or an energy pill or a painkiller.

"It does not discriminate," Woodson said. "It doesn't care what you look like. It doesn't care where you're from. It doesn't care how much money you have in your pocket." His instruction is to stay off social media for anything resembling a prescription and go to a healthcare provider instead. More is at dea.gov/onepill.

He also stops being the last Purdue man in the Hall this weekend. Drew Brees becomes the fifth Boilermaker inducted, joining Woodson, Greasy, Len Dawson and Hank Stram.

Which brought Rich to the new Purdue athletic director and the comment that did not land.

"I saw that he messed up, yes," Woodson said. "He should not have said it after the fact."

Woodson would not repeat the boast and would not say Indiana's name out loud. He offered a fact instead. The Big Ten has won the championship three years in a row, and the school that started the streak was the other team up north in another state.

Rich, who did not need much help, closed the loop for him. You go to Purdue because you want to win championships, and if you don't, go to Indiana.