Motivation Quote by Jerry Kramer

A lineman getting an ovation is sports’ version of the stage crew being pulled into the spotlight. Jerry Kramer’s line isn’t just modest surprise; it’s a quiet protest against football’s attention economy. The intent is to mark an anomaly: applause usually follows the ball, the touchdown, the camera-friendly hero. Linemen do the work that makes the highlight possible, then disappear into the pile. By calling it “very seldom,” Kramer names that invisibility without sounding bitter, which is exactly why the sentence lands.

The subtext is about status and recognition in a job built on anonymity. Linemen are trained to sacrifice ego for function; their best plays look like nothing to casual viewers. An ovation, then, is not merely noise from the stands but a reversal of the sport’s normal hierarchy. Kramer is signaling that something unusually legible happened - a moment when the crowd understood the hidden mechanics, or when narrative (a comeback, a farewell, a championship stage) made people pay attention to the men who usually absorb the punishment quietly.

Context matters: Kramer’s era helped mythologize the NFL, but it also romanticized the rugged, unglamorous laborer. His phrasing sounds like an old pro taking inventory of what the game does and doesn’t reward. It’s a line that flatters the audience, too: you saw what you weren’t supposed to see. In that small recognition sits the bigger cultural point - we cheer outcomes, rarely the infrastructure that makes them possible.