National Football Foundation

Pat Harmon, a father of 11 children, was president of the FWAA in 1984 and has been the historian for The National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame for the last 21 years.

He has had an illustrious career as a sports writer and editor and covered such greats as Vince Lombardi, Pete Rose, Casey Stengel, Arnold Palmer, Eddie Robinson, John Wooden, Bear Bryant, Jack Nicklaus, Woody Hayes, Paul Brown and Joe Louis.

Harmon's career started when he was a young sports writer in Illinois. Harmon began covering events at age 17 at the Freeport (Ill.) Journal Standard during the Depression era of the early 1930s. He would hitchhike to games, sleep on wrestling mats in gyms of teams he covered, and break into the food lines of teams.
However, he may be best known for inaugurating the selection of the Illinois All-State high school football and basketball teams.

Harmon moved to the Champaign (Ill.) News-Gazette in 1934, when he became a student at the University of Illinois. There, he married his wife Anne and built a strong reputation before spending four years at the Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette from 1947-51.

Harmon went to Cincinnati in 1951 and served as a sports editor and columnist for the Cincinnati Post for over 34 years. During his tenure, he added the title "author" to his already impressive resume with his book "Cincinnati's Greatest Sports Stories." After retiring and traveling for a year, he became historian and curator of The National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame in 1986, and continues to serve as historian today.

Recently, Harmon was named the 2004 Bert McGrane Award winner by the Football Writer's Association of America. The award honors an FWAA member who has performed great service to the organization and the game of college football. His name will also be featured in two places at the College Football Hall of Fame as a winner of the NFF's Outstanding Contribution to Amateur Football Award and among the listing of previous McGrane Award recipients.