Dorsey Levens has accomplished a lot in the NFL over 11 seasons.
The former running back Green Bay Packers played in three Super Bowls, the highlight coming when he rushed for 61 yards in the Packers’ victory over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXI in 1997.
Another highlight came a year later when he earned a trip to his only Pro Bowl after a season in which he rushed for 1,435 yards and seven touchdowns while adding 53 receptions for 370 yards and five scores.
Not bad for someone who, according to Mel Kiper, NFL draft expert, was the most overrated player in the draft in 1994 when the Packers selected him from Georgia Tech in the fifth round.
Levens enjoyed his time at the Pro Bowl in late January and early February 1998, and he traded more than stories with his fellow all-stars while in Honolulu.
Trading helmets during the 1998 Pro Bowl
Levens heard about the long tradition of players exchanging helmets after the Pro Bowl, and he was bold enough to ask Detroit Lions star Barry Sanders.
Sanders made the Pro Bowl each of his 10 seasons in the NFL, and this was number 9 after a year in which he rushed for a career-high 2,053 yards and was named the league’s MVP.
“I think he just got over it,” Levens said. “He was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t really. You can have mine if you want.'”
Levens wasn’t trying to play cool. He wanted it. He was like many of his peers who admired Sanders and marveled at the things he could do on the field, from his explosiveness to his jump-cutting to his ridiculous ability to stop and start on a dime.
When Levens recently rewatched that year’s Pro Bowl game, he saw running Jerome Bettis and maybe Eddie George on the other side both saying they wanted to watch Sanders.
Levens often sat on the bench when the Packers defense was on the field during the season, usually after the action at the Jumbotron.
But not when the Packers played the Lions. When Sanders was on the field, Levens stood on the sidelines to watch him.
“Just to see what he was going to do,” said Levens, who was inducted into the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame in 2009. “Hopefully he wasn’t going to do too much against our team. But that was Barry, and he was hard to stop.
Sanders’ generosity at the Pro Bowl gave Levens the chance to find another player to trade his helmet with, and to be perhaps the only man to get away with two that year.
Levens traded helmets with Tampa Bay Buccaneers safety John Lynch who played in his first Pro Bowl in what turned out to be a Hall of Fame career.
Two helmets. Two Hall of Famers.
“John was one of those safeties that you had to know where he was at all times,” Levens said. “He packed a load. Just a lot of respect for him.”
Signed helmets are auctioned
The helmets, both signed by the player they came from, have not seen the light of day for the last 25 years. They’ve been in a storage bin in Levens’ basement.
He never forgot he had the helmets, but he didn’t give it much thought.
Levens did his Green and Gold G Lounge podcast with fellow hosts and former Packers Ahman Green and Gilbert Brown and happened to tell the story of swapping helmets at the Pro Bowl.
A short time later, he began receiving emails from listeners expressing interest in purchasing them. He had never considered selling, but the offers were solid.
Levens did more research before his agent finally contacted Heritage Auctions, which will be auctioning off the two helmets at its spring sports catalog auction on May 11 and 13.
The Sanders helmet is already priced at $9,600 with over two weeks to go.
Lynch’s helmet is approaching $2,000.
It’s not that the helmets don’t mean anything to Levens, but he does believe they will mean even more to fans.
It is the memories of that week that Levens cherishes. He still laughs about practicing on special teams with every other Pro Bowler who never played on special teams during the season and went way too hard.
At one point during a workout — more like a glorified walk-through — Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Levon Kirkland grabbed his jersey.
“He’s like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, this is your first time here, isn’t it?'” Levens said with a laugh. “I was like ‘Yeah.’ He says, ‘You’re going way too fast. Slow down.'”
Levens loved talking to Sanders and receiving some of his wisdom, except when he asked Sanders what he did for workouts during the off-season.
Sanders told him that he was away from the game and everything around it until June. Levens knew that if he waited that long to work out, he would probably rise to 250 pounds.
That’s why there was only one Barry Sanders.
“Collectors still remember him as that magical figure, which is why his memorabilia is extra special,” said heritage consignment director Chris Nerat. “His running style, his speed, he stood out as a unique running back in NFL history. He could do things that were really superhuman. … (The helmet) is from the best season of his career, I don’t know where his helmet is from the (regular) season. It’s probably in Canton or something. So this is the only helmet that can probably be obtained from that miraculous season.
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Lynch’s helmet has the added benefit of being worn during the Buccaneers’ playoff game against the Packers one month before the Pro Bowl. It was Tampa Bay’s first time in the postseason in 15 years.
“To get hold of a rock-solid, historically significant helmet from one of the better defenders entrenched in Canton will certainly be a heavy bid,” Nerat said.
Dorsey Levens will keep his own souvenirs
Anyone hoping that a few emails might convince Levens to part with some of his own career mementos is out of luck.
Levens has enough items to fill a museum, including his Super Bowl ring and game-worn jersey from the Packers’ win and autographed jerseys (not game-worn) from former teammates such as Reggie White, Brett Favre and Le Roy Butler.
He has his helmets from his Super Bowls, including from Super Bowl XXXIX when he was a member of the Philadelphia Eagles. All three of his Super Bowl jerseys are framed on the wall.
He has the turf boots he wore to the Super Bowl win, but he threw the ones from the Packers’ Super Bowl loss to the Denver Broncos the following year.
Levens even kept memorabilia from his acting career, including the wardrobe he wore in a non-speaking role as a football coach in “We Are Marshall” with Matthew McConaughey.
“I just thought it made sense,” Levens said of preserving items from his career. “All of us who play in the NFL, we’ve all dreamed of it. I know guys who only played one year and got their jerseys framed.
“It’s such a small percentage of guys that make it to the NFL. I knew I would cherish that forever.”
This article originally appeared in Green Bay Press-Gazette: Packers’ Dorsey Levens will auction his Barry Sanders Pro Bowl helmet
