A significant retirement has taken place in the National Football League as Running Back Matt Forte has announced his retirement in a statement to Sports Spectrum.

Selected in the 2nd Round out of Tulane, Forte quickly assumed the starting Running Back job in Chicago where he would accrue his first of five 1,000 Yard seasons. Forte would prove to be a versatile back as he was a receiving threat going for 50 or more receptions in his first four seasons and in 2014, he would catch over 100 passes.

A two time Pro Bowl selection, Forte was in the top ten in Yards from Scrimmage five times and retires with 14,468, which is good enough for 28th all-time. He would spend his first eight years with the Bears and his final two with the New York Jets.

Forte might be a considered a fringe candidate for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, of which he is eligible in 2023.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to thank Matt Forte for the gridiron memories!

As most of the regular visitors to Notinhalloffame.com are aware we are (very) slowly putting together our top 50 players of every franchise in the “Big 4” of North American sports. After that is completed we will take a look at how each organization honors their past players and executives.

As such, it is important to us that last night the New York Rangers retired the number 19 of Jean Ratelle.

From Lac St-Jean, Quebec, Ratelle debuted for the Rangers in 1960 and by the 67-68 season had emerged as one of the top playmakers in the NHL. He would famously center the Goal-A-Game Line (The GAG Line) with Vic Hadfield and Rod Gilbert and in the 1971-72 campaign would score 109 Points while being named a Second Team All Star and winning the Lady Byng and Lester B. Pearson Award.  After sixteen years with the organization, he was traded to the Boston Bruins early in the 1975-76 season.

As a Ranger, Ratelle had seven 70 Point seasons and tallied 817 Points overall wearing blue and his 336 Goals are still good enough for second in franchise history.

Ratelle becomes the ninth player to have his number retried by New York following Ed Giacoin (1), Brian Leetch (2), Harry Howell (3), Rod Gilbert (7), Adam Graves (9), And Bathgate (9), Mark Messier (11) and Mike Richter (35). He would enter the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1985.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to congratulate Jean Ratelle for earning this honor.

As most of the regular visitors to Notinhalloffame.com are aware we are (very) slowly putting together our top 50 players of every franchise in the “Big 4” of North American sports. After that is completed we will take a look at how each organization honors their past players and executives.

As such, it is important to us that the Orlando Magic has announced that Tracy McGrady will be inducted into their franchise’s Hall of Fame.

After playing his first three seasons in Toronto McGrady signed with Orlando and would become the teams starting Shooting Guard and would be named an All Star in all four of his campaigns with the Magic. T-Mac would average 28.1 Points per Game over his career in Orlando, the highest in team history and he would also win his two scoring titles as a member of the Magic. He was also named All-NBA in each season with Orlando, with a pair of second team and a pair of first team selections.

He will be honored on March 20 when the team hosts the Raptors.

McGrady becomes the seventh member of the Hall, following Owner Rich DeVos, Co-Founders Pat Williams and Jimmy Hewitt and former players Nick Anderson, Shaquille O’Neal and Anfernee Hardaway.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to congratulate Tracy McGrady for obtaining this honor.

Hell froze over again in the WWE Hall of Fame again as it was announced that Jeff Jarrett will become the next member of their institution.

Jarrett was last seen on WWE television in 1999 when he dropped the Intercontinental Championship to Chyna and allegedly held up the company for a large payout (his contract has lapsed the day earlier). When Vince McMahon purchased WCW on that RAW he openly said that Jarrett was “G-O-N-E, Gone” and he was not expected to ever be welcomed back.

But as they say, anything can happen in the WWE!

The son of former wrestler, Jerry Jarrett, Jeff Jarrett started his career in Continental and moved to the USWA when his father formed the Memphis based promotion when the company merged with the recently acquired World Class. Jarrett would emerge as the number two face behind Jerry “The King “ Lawler and he would win multiple championships there.

The USWA would begin a working agreement with the WWF, and Jarrett would debut in late 1993 as “Double J” Jeff Jarrett, an aspiring country musician who was using the organization to propel his music career. He would languish in the mid-card throughout 1994 but would win the Intercontinental Title from Razor Ramon at the 1995 Royal Rumble and with the exception of a brief vacation of the belt due to a controversial ending in a defence to Bob Holly and a two day stint where Ramon had won the back the belt, Jarrett held the title going into the summer of that year.

At the In Your House II Pay Per View, Jarrett would pull double duty, first lip-synching his “hit”, “With My Baby Tonight” and would later lose his title (due to botched interference by the Roadie) to Shawn Michaels. Jarrett and the Roadie would leave abruptly after the show due to a pay dispute, but Jarrett would return briefly later in the year, only again to leave without notice.

Jarrett would this time go to WCW and after a period of “free agency” would join the Four Horsemen and defeat Dean Malenko for the United States Title, though would lose it to Steve McMichael. After his one year contract expired he returned to the WWF.

Jarrett was poised to be a near main event player upon his return. He delivered a worked-shoot promo on both the WWF and WCW and positioned himself as a wrestler who refused to compete against anyone other than elite competition. This led to a one off match with the Undertaker at the D-Generation X Pay Per View (he won by disqualification) and would then briefly align himself with Jim Cornette and the NWA, only for that to fall off while he would return to the Double J gimmick and a new manager (Tennessee Lee). That didn’t last either, and he would be given a new look via a hair vs hair match (losing to X-Pac) and a new attitude where he was more of a perpetually angry wrestler.

Jarrett would be paired with Owen Hart and Debra McMichael and he would win the WWF World Tag Team Title. Following Owen’s death, he would become the Intercontinental Champion, a belt he would trade back and forth with Edge and D-lo Brown, but for the most part in 1999, Jarrett would hold the championship until he lost it to Chyna at the No Mercy show. He would follow Vince Russo to WCW, who took over as the head writer there.

Jarrett would be pushed to the top at WCW but the company was in severe disarray during the time he was there. He would however win the World Heavyweight Championship there four times.

With the demise of WCW and McMahon’s lack of interest in him, he would work in various independents but most notably he would form TNA Wrestling in 2002 and would run weekly Pay Per Views until 2004 where they ran monthly ones. They would also begin a weekly program on Spike TV and while Jarrett was often criticized for booking himself at the top, there was much praise given to him for the creation of a solid second national promotion offering work to many professional wrestlers across the country.

After a decade, Jarrett would be forced out of the company he created and would again create another promotion, Global Force Wrestling though despite partnerships with New Japan and TNA itself, it was not overly successful. GFW would merge with TNA (now named Impact Wrestling) in early 2017 and the revamped promotion took the GFW banner with Jarrett as a key executive, though Impact Wrestling would cease its relationship with Jarrett and the GFW name.

Despite the fact that Jarrett had been speculated for the WWE Hall of Fame, this still has to be considered a surprise given the past history between Jarrett and McMahon. On our Notinhalloffame.com WWE list had him at #45 as of our last ranking.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to congratulate Jeff Jarrett for earning this honor.