NEW ORLEANS — San Diego shone as brightly in the NFL world Thursday night than at any point since the Chargers moved away.
Two of the four of the Pro Football Hall of Fame class announced Thursday claim the city loudly — tight end Antonio Gates, who spent 14 of his 16 seasons playing his home games at Qualcomm Stadium, and cornerback Eric Allen, a Point Loma High School alum still lives nearby in the La Playa neighborhood.
“I was born and raised in San Diego — Valencia Park Pop Warner, Point Loma High School,” Allen said minutes after he was announced to a crowded theater. “No matter where I go, people understand where I’m from. There’s not a place in California that puts out better product that guys in San Diego, you know?”
Allen raised his children to be fans of the Raiders, Eagles and Saints, the teams where he spent his 14-year career. They were fans of Gates, though, even if his dad joked his jerseys had to be put in the back of their closet.
“Coming from a different sport to be able to excel in our sport and be one of the top guys when he was playing was really special,” Allen said.
Gates, a Michigan native, found his gold — and navy blue — out west.
An undrafted former basketball player from Kent State, Gates played from 2003-18 with the Chargers, all but the last two in San Diego, and holds franchise records with 955 receptions and 11,841 receiving yards. No tight end in NFL history has more career receiving touchdowns than his 116.
“I’m hopeful that (San Diegans) a guy that you can count on,” Gates said. “That was always my mission, always my goal, to outlast people. I treated every year like it was my first project … It was like, ‘Nobody’s seen me, I gotta prove it,’ every single year.
“I always feared getting cut. That fear drove me to success more than anything. I’m a free agent, no matter what the contract says. … I always wanted to prove I was the best and I belonged here.”
Gates’ story is one of the most unlikely in NFL history. He was a standout basketball player at Kent State, reaching the Elite Eight in 2002. When the Chargers signed him as an undrafted free agent in 2003, it marked the first time he’d played organized football since high school. He itted Thursday night that his mind works differently than a lot of his fellow Hall of Famers — he was driven to excel in football to try to prove something to himself, and others, after being spurned by basketball, which was his first love.
“Somebody gotta pay for this,” he said. “It fueled me for 16 years.”
Gates wasn’t picked to the Hall last season, his first year of eligibility after a Chargers career that saw him voted into eight-straight Pro Bowls, all while the team was in San Diego, and named to three first-team all-pro teams. The only blemish on Gates’ record was a four-game suspension for violating the NFL’s performance-enhancing drug ban in 2015 that was revealed when the league found he had a high testosterone level during a blood test. He said he didn’t knowingly take a banned substance and said he needed to pay closer attention to the supplements he took.
He was the star of this year’s class, which included edge rusher Jared Allen, who had 136 sacks in 12 years with the Chiefs, Vikings, Bears and Panthers; Sterling Sharpe, who had 8,134 receiving yards in seven seasons with the Packers; and Eric Allen.
Eric Allen — who played for the Eagles from 1988-94, Saints from 1995-97 and Raiders from 1998-2001 — had only one more year of eligibility on the modern-era ballot. He went to six Pro Bowls and was named an all-pro once. His 54 interceptions are the 21st-most in NFL history. Fourteen of the 20 players ahead of him on the list have already been placed into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
He said the only problem he had with his long wait was the toll it took on his wife, whom he met when they were 16, and his friends.
No longer.
“We’re excited and happy whenever a guy who was born in San Diego was able to get to this point,” he said.
