via www.elgadfly.com

By Steve Schaefer

In 2005, when the Syracuse football team retired the #44 in honor of the great running backs that made the jersey legendary, perhaps the greatest running back in NFL history paid one of his successors a huge compliment.

On that day Jim Brown deferred to three-time All-American Floyd Little to speak for #44, a number worn by not only Brown, but also the late Ernie Davis.

In the latest Sports Illustrated, Gary Smith offers up a touching piece about Floyd’s long journey to being enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and the fan who became a friend and crucial cog in assuring that the honor would not come too late.

The entire piece is worth a read, another classic from Smith that detail’s Tom Mackie’s inspired crusade for Little’s well-deserved induction, but perhaps the most heart-rending moment comes at a location familiar to any Orange alum:

Like that time in the early ’90s when Floyd was sitting beside his son, Marc, in the same booth at The Varsity restaurant in Syracuse that he’d frequented in his college days and two young men approached to ask him to settle a bet over what year he’d been enshrined in the Hall. “What do you think?” Floyd asked.

“I say 1982,” one replied. “My friend here says ’84.”

Floyd raised his hands. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I have never even been nominated.”

The Unexpected Hero (Sports Illustrated)