BOISE - Jerry Kramer looks upward when asked if he thinks about the 2018 Pro Football Hall of Fame vote coming up this weekend.
"I've refused to think about it, more than 10,000 times a day! Ha!”
For over half of Jerry Kramer's 82 years on Earth he has ridden a "Will-he-or-won’t-he get into the Hall of Fame “roller coaster." And for 45 years the NFL's answer has been "no."
It's something he resolved, internally, years ago.
"I felt like they (the NFL) had given me 100 presents in my lifetime and to be upset or angry about one I didn’t get was kind of stupid!” said Kramer. “It’s been a wonderful ride and experience and I'm looking at this moment the same way."
This moment is the result of a historic career with an extraordinary team.
"We had the best team in the history of football," he said without hesitation.
He won five World Championships with the Green Bay Packers (including two Super Bowl titles), he was named to the Pro Bowl 5 times, he was on the NFL's 1960's All-Decade team, he was called the best guard in the NFL's first 50 years by an NFL committee and yet, inexplicably, he has been outside of Canton, Ohio, looking in.
Saturday night, Kramer will be alongside a handful of family members in the Minneapolis hotel where the vote will be taken. Waiting, and wondering, for an 11th time, if this time will be the time.
"If I am selected the chairman of the NFL Hall of Fame will knock on the door and congratulate me.
And if I look out the door and it’s the janitor, I’m not going to open the door,” said Kramer with a chuckle.
The official announcement will be made Saturday night, February 3, on NBC-TV (KTVB) in the NFL Honors show beginning at 8 p.m. MT.
Jerry said he is committed to going to the show but he does have concerns if the vote doesn’t go in his favor.
"I'm thinking about going and hearing all the 'You should have made it,' 'You deserved it.' Please, spare me that.
"But, so many folks have been behind me and writing letters for me I think that I think it would be poor of me to not attend."
Once again Jerry Kramer finds himself, much like his famous block in the Ice Bowl 50 years ago, fourth down on the one-yard line, one yard away from victory and football immortality.
And though he says he will accept the outcome no matter what the verdict, Kramer says getting into the shrine will be the perfect final chapter of a legendary career.
"The Hall is like the cherry on top of the sundae. It completes the story. And it completes the journey."