There is an old joke about keeping secrets. “I know YOU can keep a secret,” one player says to another. “It’s the person you tell who I am not sure about.”
NFL alum Larry Fitzgerald, who last month was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, was given the news two weeks before the formal announcement. However, there were strings attached to being informed so early. He was asked by the Hall’s staff not to share the news with anyone until the NFL Honors show aired from San Francisco three nights before the Super Bowl.
“It felt very weird holding on to the news,” Fitzgerald recently told ESPN. “But I know if you are told a secret, you have to keep it.”
During those two weeks before the public announcement, he thought often about all those family members, coaches, and friends who helped him earn this football achievement at age 42. He knew he could not break the news to any of them, especially to his father Larry, Sr.
“I love him but,” says the younger Fitz with a laugh, “some people are not as good with secrets as others. I’ve told my dad things in the past and somehow, they often came out in ways that I didn’t anticipate, and it wasn’t good. So, I just said to myself ‘I’m going to allow this to be a surprise for Pops, too’.”
Larry, Jr. is a member of the small 2026 Hall of Fame class with Drew Brees, Luke Kuechly, Adam Vinatieri and Roger Craig. One of the primary reasons he wanted to keep his secret quiet was out of respect for the other four men. If he told someone the news and somehow the rest of the class prematurely got out, it would have been disrespectful to them, their journeys and Hall of Fame experience.
Unfortunately, Fitzgerald’s mother Carol was not around for Fitz to share the news with her. She died of breast cancer in 2003. Two years later, Larry established the eponymous Larry Fitzgerald Foundation to help carry on his mother’s legacy of helping breast cancer survivors and their impacted families.
We at NFL Alumni are proud to call Larry Fitzgerald our brother. He sets an exemplary example for all of us through his humility, integrity, community service and… ability to keep a secret.
