Gap in Strahan's teeth causes challenges in creating HOF bust

When Michael Strahan is inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday, it won't just be his football achievements on display. 

Strahan's trademark smile will also be immortalized.

It's taken six months for Blair Buswell, the man responsible for producing the bronze bust sculptures given to inductees, to recreate Strahan's smile. 

Despite his preference that players keep their mouth closed while he prepares the clay model, Buswell said he's more than happy to let them choose their likeness - young, old, bearded, etc.

But Strahan, known for the gap between his two front teeth, told Buswell, "If I close my mouth, people won’t know who it is."

That posed a unique challenge for Buswell, according to the New Yorker:

And so, like everything else on his face—the bridge of his nose, the distance between his laugh lines, the width of his goatee—the gap between Strahan’s front teeth had to be measured. Strahan was happy to oblige: several years ago, a friend had made a bust of his head just from photos, and it hadn’t gone well. "It’s O.K.," Strahan said of that earlier bust, before correcting himself ("It’s not bad"), then correcting himself again ("It’s in a trophy case far away from everybod"”). In March, Buswell brought a clay model to the “Live with Kelly and Michael” studio, near Lincoln Center, and stuck a pair of calipers into Strahan’s mouth. Strahan sat for four hours while Buswell worked on perfecting the model. Strahan thought the session went long; Buswell said that he had taken half of the time he would have liked.

The sculptures will be unveiled Saturday night in Canton, Ohio, when Strahan, Derrick Brooks, Ray Guy, Claude Humphrey, Walter Jones, Andre Reed and Aeneas Williams are inducted into the Hall.