CANTON, Ohio -- If there was any doubt about the real reason Dick LeBeau is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, it quickly vanished during his induction speech.
LeBeau spoke little about the 14 seasons he spent as a cornerback for the Detroit Lions, the only portion of his pro football life that is officially acknowledged on his three-page Hall biography.
He spoke a whole lot about his NFL coaching career, which is entering its 38th season.
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Emmitt Smith and Jerry Rice might have been the stars of Saturday night's enshrinement. However, of the seven members of the Class of 2010, only one had an entire current team in the crowd of Fawcett Stadium to support him: LeBeau. That team is the Pittsburgh Steelers, whose defense LeBeau has guided for 12 years in two stints (1992-96 and 2004-present). The Steelers left their training camp to be here, an unprecedented move for a team not participating in the annual Hall of Fame preseason game.
"I'm being inducted as a player," LeBeau said. "Believe me, that makes me most proud. I did that for 14 years, but for the last 38 years, I've been a football coach. So to ask me (not) to talk more than two minutes and not talk about my guys over here (pointing to the Steelers players in a section of the stands), I'll tell you right now, it ain't gonna happen."
It certainly didn't.
Yes, LeBeau was prolific as a player, intercepting 62 passes. That is tied for seventh-best in league history.
But the most indelible mark he left on the game has been in his role as the brains behind some of the greatest defenses the NFL has ever seen.
When those of us who voted for the Class of 2010 gathered in South Florida last February on the eve of Super Bowl XLIV, we were instructed not to consider LeBeau's coaching accomplishments. That's because an assessment of a coach's worthiness is supposed to be treated separately from that of a player.
Yet, let's be real about this. The voters in that room clearly gave considerable weight to LeBeau's achievements as a coach. We saw him as one of the brightest and most influential defensive coaches the game has ever seen. We knew him far better as the creator of the "zone blitz" than we did for his ball-hawking skills with the Lions. We considered the two Super Bowls that his defenses helped win for the Steelers and the two others that they helped the Cincinnati Bengals reach.
LeBeau was realistic as well about how his name and legacy registered with the crowd and the national television audience. He talked proudly about how, after the Steelers' most recent Super Bowl victory, he was acknowledged by President Barack Obama during a visit to the White House.
"The president was about halfway through his talk and he said something like, 'Well, we all know Dick LeBeau. He's the defensive coordinator of the great Steeler defense. And, Dick, where are you, Dick?' I'm like, 'Hey, Pres, I'm right over here.'"
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LeBeau told the crowd that he wasn't going to talk about the players he faced as a cornerback, because, "You would say, 'Who is that? Who did he say?'" Instead, he talked about current Steeler defenders such as Troy Polamalu, Ryan Clark, Casey Hampton, Aaron Smith, Brett Keisel, and former Pittsburgh defensive standouts Rod Woodson, Carnell Lake, Kevin Greene, and Greg Lloyd.
And the most poignant part of LeBeau's message dealt with his age and the fact he has not allowed it to hold him back from becoming a tremendously successful coach.
LeBeau is 72, although he looks much closer to 50. He has a full, thick head of hair that has some gray but isn't white. He's lean and fit and moves with almost no signs of someone whose body has been worn down by those 14 seasons as a player and nearly 73 years in life.
LeBeau continues to thrive as a person and as a coach, and he used his time at the podium to encourage others to follow his approach.
"Life is for living, folks," he said. "Don't let a number be anything other than a number. Don't let somebody tell you that you're too old to do this or too old to do that. Stay in life. Life is a gift; it's a joy. Don't drop out of it. Don't let somebody else tell you (otherwise) and don't let your mind tell you (the same).
"If I would have gotten out of my life's work at 65 or 67 -- when they say is the age of retirement -- here is what I would have missed, folks. I would have missed not one but two world championship football teams that I got to be a part of ... I got to be a part of a No. 1 defense that statistically had the lowest numbers in the last 35 or 40 years."
Not to diminish what LeBeau did as a player, but those are the accomplishments that did the most to carry him into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
