Former Elias Sports Bureau owner Seymour Siwoff gets an honor from Pro Football Hall of Fame

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CANTON, Ohio (AP) — Seymour Siwoff, the former owner of the NFL's official statistician, will be been honored by the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The Hall announced Tuesday that Siwoff will receive the Ralph Hay Pioneer Award this summer for his longtime work with the NFL during his time at the Elias Sports Bureau.

Siwoff ran Elias for 67 years and the company became the league's official statistician in 1961. Siwoff remained in his role until his death in 2019. Siwoff was a semifinalist for the 2026 Hall of Fame class in the contributor category.

“Seymour used his knowledge, talent and passion for numbers to help the NFL record and preserve its history through a game-by-game, consistent application of statistics, and over time the creation of new statistics to track,” Hall of Fame president Jim Porter said in a statement. "You cannot tell the history of the NFL without its statistics, and Seymour — and his decades of work at Elias Sports Bureau — did more in that area than any other individual.”

The Ralph Hay Pioneer Award is named for the former owner of the Canton Bulldogs who hosted the NFL’s formational meeting in Canton in 1920. The award was established in 1972 and is given to recipients for “significant innovative contributions to professional football.”

There have been 11 previous winners, with the most recent being in 2024 to Spanish-language broadcaster Fernando Von Rossum.

Siwoff's grandson, Joe Gilston, will receive the award in his grandfather's honor during induction weekend on Aug. 7.

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