Retired NFL star Anderson recalls ‘a great period of my life’ in Batavia
Batavia product Ken Anderson’s absence from the Pro Football Hall of Fame feels like a mistake.
The retired Cincinnati Bengals quarterback was a four-time Pro Bowl pick, the 1981 National Football League MVP and All-Pro in that Super Bowl season.
Anderson won the award for the NFL's “Man of the Year” in 1975, later renamed the Walter Payton Award. Anderson won it for philanthropy he continues today in Villa Hills, Kentucky, where he lives with Cristy, his wife of 25 years. Anderson settled just south of the Ohio River coming out of Augustana College as a rookie in 1971.
A pinpoint passer, upon his 1986 retirement after 16 seasons all with the Bengals, Anderson ranked seventh in passing yards in NFL history, 32,838. According to Pro Football History he’s the only quarterback to lead the league in passer rating in consecutive seasons in two decades, 1974-75, and 1981-82.
On the Pro Football Reference chart of “similar players” over his career, half of Anderson’s 10 comparative quarterbacks are hall of famers — Dan Fouts, Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw, Bob Griese, Warren Moon.
Anderson’s been considered for Canton but has not made the cut. He will, though, be inducted into the new Illinois Sports Hall of Fame in Springfield, with ceremonies Friday and Saturday.
Anderson is among 11 speakers slated for “An Evening with the Illinois Sports Legends,” Friday at the Bank of Springfield Convention Center.
Reached at home after a workout, Anderson’s address will be “mainly about growing up in Illinois and in Batavia,” he said.
“What a great period of my life that was,” said Anderson, 76. “A small town where you kind of knew everybody. My gosh, the same five guys that started on our seventh-grade basketball team started as high school seniors as well.”
Graduating in Batavia High School’s Class of 1967, Anderson’s yard backed up to that of NBA Hall of Fame big man Dan Issel from the Class of ’66, also among the inaugural inductees into the Illinois Sports Hall of Fame.
The man behind the hall of fame, Tim Turpin, incorporated the Illinois Sports Hall of Fame in February 2024, too late to arrange an induction ceremony, he said. The 2024-25 classes include 375 athletes, coaches, officials, administrators and media personnel “born in Illinois or who made their trade in Illinois,” Turpin said.
Currently an “internet hall of fame,” Turpin said, he’s in negotiations with a Springfield group with the hope of building a 60,000-square-foot facility for it.
“That’ll be the Cooperstown of the Midwest when we find the right location,” Turpin said.
Of his own Midwest hotbed, his Batavia neighborhood, Anderson also recalled the late NBA broadcaster Craig Sager, a couple years younger than he and Issel.
Another old pal and neighbor, Byron Von Hoff, a 1966 New York Mets second-round draft pick, just visited Anderson last Friday at the Ken Anderson Alliance (KAA) foundation dinner in Cincinnati.
The KAA helps provide opportunities to adults with developmental disabilities. It assists about 300 people a month, Anderson said.
Now KAA chair emeritus, maybe Anderson’s most important job nowadays is doting on his six grandchildren. When he picks up the boys from football camp he can do the grandfatherly task of reliving the old days — “about how great it was growing up,” he said.
“You’re outside all the time. School got out and you went out and played baseball. Growing up in a small town, I could be 8 years old and I could ride my bike to the swimming hole a couple miles away,” said Anderson, who returns to Batavia annually for the basketball alumni golf outing former Bulldogs coach Jim Roberts holds each July.
“The friends we made, and the camaraderie. I think at that time Batavia was a town of about 10,000, Just a small, little farm town. Of course, it’s grown substantially since then.”
Anderson’s achievements have been honored by the Batavia Public Schools, by the Cincinnati Bengals and by Augustana College, where he starred in football and also was a three-year letterman in basketball.
“And now I’m going into the Illinois Sports Hall of Fame,” he said. “That ain’t bad for a kid from Batavia.”