Sports Then and Now

"Prime Time" should be an easy pick for the Hall of Fame voters.

Predicting which team will win the Super Bowl on Sunday is an iffy proposition, but one sure bet this weekend is that the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee will do something surprising when making their picks for the 2011 Hall of Fame Class.

There are many wonderful things about the NFL, but the selection process for the Pro Football Hall of Fame is not one of them.

Over the last two years I have written several articles outlining how I think the voters have missed the boat in many of their choices, or non-choices, and now have created a back-log of qualified candidates who are not in the Hall of Fame and probably will not gain entry for years to come, if ever.

You can read my list from last summer of the 25 players I think are most deserving of Hall of Fame selection. This list does not include first-year eligible players, but seven of the 17 Hall of Fame finalists for this year are included on my top 25.

When the committee meets tomorrow, if they do nothing else I hope they select at least six members to the 2011 Hall of Fame class and I’m okay if they make it seven.

Last year marked the first time since 2001 that the Hall of Fame voters selected the maximum number of seven inductees. Part of the reason for the glut of deserving players is that the voters selected only four players in both 2004 and 2005. Considering that 13 players and coaches who have entered the Hall of Fame in subsequent years were eligible during those years, it doesn’t make any sense to me why those classes were so small. Read the rest of this entry →

Derrick Brooks was the defensive leader for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for 14 seasons.

Throughout NFL history, the linebacker position has typically been the glamor spot on defense. Players like Butkus, Nitschke, Huff, Singletary, Taylor and Carson all became household names and epitomized the ferocity of the NFL while roaming the field with reckless abandon.

Over the last two decades that tradition has been continued by players such as Brian Urlacher and Ray Lewis. However, perhaps the best linebacker of this generation has been a player whose name and image is not as familiar to most NFL fans as that of other players at his position.

For 14 seasons, Derrick Brooks patrolled from sideline to sideline for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers while serving as the leader of the best unit of his generation. During that time he never missed a game and earned 11 Pro Bowl trips and five times was named a first-team All Pro.

Yet, when most people think of the great Tampa Bay defenses of the 1990s and 2000s the images that often come to mind are those of Warren Sapp, Ronde Barber and John Lynch. While those three were often earning TV time with big sacks, hits or interceptions, Brooks was quietly making the plays that helped make the defense special. Read the rest of this entry →

The running backs he blocked for are in the Hall of Fame, but 10-time finalist Jerry Kramer is not.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio is where NFL greats take the next step and become immortal legends.  Since opening its doors in 1963, 260 former players, coaches and administrators have received football’s greatest honor, but there is a growing list of seemingly deserving players who for one reason or another have been unable to earn a bust in Canton.

Being recognized as a Hall of Famer is certainly an honor that should be reserved for those few players, administrators and coaches that were truly the best of the best. It should be hard and there should be a thin line between being a great player and earning Hall of Fame immortality.

However, after reviewing all members of the Hall of Fame as well as more than 250 former NFL greats who have not yet earned a spot in Canton, it is clear that the Hall of Fame selection committee has been inconsistent in their choices and not done a good job in ensuring that all deserving players are inducted in a timely manner.

The 2010 Hall of Fame class marks the first time since 2001 that the maximum allowed number of inductees, seven, will receive Hall of Fame busts. In back-to-back years of 2004 and 2005 the committee chose only the minimum of four players despite the fact that 12 players who later were chosen for the Hall of Fame were eligible for induction during those years.

In a previous article I outlined my disappointment that the Hall of Fame committee has often made players wait more than 30 years after retirement before being inducted though they didn’t throw a pass, score a touchdown or make a tackle during that time.

While I generally believe that the Hall of Fame committee has done a pretty good job of making selections of players who are deserving of induction, I did also create a list of the 10 players who maybe shouldn’t be in the Hall.

Below is my list of the 10 players who are not in the Hall of Fame who I believe are most deserving of induction. Several have been tantalizingly close to selection, while others have been annually by-passed in favor of players with similar or lesser accomplishments. Hopefully all of them will one day get the thrill of having their bust immortalized in Canton. Read the rest of this entry →

On April 22, 1990 – after the Dallas Cowboys selected him with their first-round pick in the National Football League Draft – Emmitt James Smith III arrived in Dallas for the first time ever as a Cowboy wearing a brown and yellow jump suit with polka dots. Smith, the 17^th pick overall, wore the same thing at his introductory press conference. Soon, the legendary running back will be wearing the famous gold jacket.

Can you say extreme makeover? Absolutely. Smith’s attire has not been to shabby since that polka-dotted jump suit. Outfits such as the uniform of America’s Team, striped suit coats at press conferences, and his silky smooth green sleeveless shirt he wore on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars have dotted his wardrobe over the last 20 years. However, the gold jacket is in a class by itself.

In coming full circle, Smith has earned much respect for his on and off-the-field achievements. The National Football League’s all-time leading rusher with 18,355 yards, Smith is on the doorstep of football immortality with only the formal and official festivities left to secure his place in history.

Smith displays his new jersey while decked out in his polka dotted jump suit at his first press conference in Dallas in 1990.

Smith is one of seven players, the maximum allowed in one year, that will be inducted into The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio on Saturday Aug. 7 in a ceremony starting at 7 pm EST. Smith joins Jerry Rice, John Randle, Rickey Jackson, Russ Grimm, Dick Lebeau, and Floyd Little in making up the Class of 2010. Smith and Rice are both first-ballot inductees while Lebeau and Little were elected as senior committee nominees.

Smith’s journey to football’s ultimate honor started with some bold aspirations. Heading into his rookie year in Dallas, Smith made a list of goals he wanted to achieve during his pro career. Among things like leading the team in rushing and being a pro-bowl player, Smith also stated that he desired to become the NFL’s all-time leading rusher.

Considering he stated this just two weeks after being drafted, before he had signed a contract, before he had ever been in an NFL training camp, and before he had ever touched the ball as a pro, he had his critics. Yet Smith had heard criticism before. NFL head coaches, scouts, personnel directors, and pro football media people did not have him rated as the best running back available heading into the draft. They claimed he lacked speed, was too short, too small, and not strong enough for the pro game. Read the rest of this entry →

While Lynn Swann made some of the most spectacular catches in Super Bowl history, his play during the rest of his career is hardly Hall of Fame worthy.

Over the last two years I have spent a significant amount of time analyzing the players that are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and those who have Hall of Fame caliber credentials, but have not been inducted.  It has reaffirmed my belief that there are a lot of deserving football players who have yet to get a bust in Canton. It also has made me scratch my head over a few of the players that have received football immortality.

Overall, I will say that for the most part, the Hall of Fame voters have done a very good job of selecting top players for the Hall of Fame. While I believe there are at least two dozen deserving players who have been overlooked, the number of players in the Hall of Fame that I question is significantly less.

In fact, when I originally created my list of the top 10 players in the Hall of Fame that I think you could argue don’t belong I actually was able to only come up with nine players from the modern era that I really questioned. However, the selection this year of Dick LeBeau provided the 10th name for my list.

In creating my list I did not analyze any of the players from the pre-1950 era who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame. My reasoning being that the game during that time period and selection process in the early days of HOF is so different than today that trying to argue for or against certain players from the pre-modern era made little sense.

Instead, players had to have played a majority of their careers after 1950 to be considered for this list.

The one player that this rule may have saved was Bob Waterfield, the former Rams quarterback. I have seen a number of articles in recent years questioning if his numbers justified being in the HOF or if he got in primarily because he was married to then pinup girl Jane Russell.

So, here is my list of players whose Hall of Fame status I think could be questioned. In some cases it isn’t necessarily that I think they don’t belong, but rather question how they could have been inducted before other players from their era or who played the same position.

However, there are a couple that I think were selected purely because of politics and the “scratch my back” network. I’m sure there will be strong disagreement to some of my choices, but remember, these are my opinions and the great thing about having opinions and living in the United States is that everyone is entitled to one and encouraged to share it.

I have given mine, and now I encourage you to share your thoughts and opinions. Read the rest of this entry →

If Floyd Little is deserving of Hall of Fame induction, then why did it take 35 years after his retirement for his name to be called?

This is the first of a series of articles we will post this week that will focus on the Pro Football Hall of Fame in preparation for the 2010 induction ceremony on August 7th.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame Inductions next weekend will again be a special event as seven names will be added to the list of all-time greats.

For some players, such as 2010 inductees Emmitt Smith and Jerry Rice, the wait for Hall of Fame selection is limited to only the mandatory five year waiting period. However, for others, including 2010 inductees Floyd Little and Dick LeBeau, the wait for the call from the Hall of Fame can sometimes take decades.

Later this week I will be posting my picks for the 10 players not in the Hall of Fame who are deserving of induction and the 10 players in the Hall that I think don’t really belong. However, in general I think the Hall of Fame committee has done a pretty good job of putting deserving players in the Hall of Fame.

Where I do think the Hall of Fame committee has been very weak is related to how long it often takes them to finally induct someone who we all know immediately is deserving of being in the Hall of Fame. There are far too many cases in NFL history of clearly Hall of Fame deserving players and coaches who have had to wait much longer than justified before being selected and thus not been able to fully enjoy the honor.

While I have long considered Little to be a borderline Hall of Fame candidate (I ranked him as the seventh most deserving running back last year when I picked the top 25 running backs not in the NFL) and I don’t think that LeBeau belongs simply based on his playing career (I ranked him as the 12th best defensive back not in the HOF), if they were going to get into the Hall I have a problem that it took more than 30 years after they became eligible for them to enter the Hall of Fame.

My personal “sniff test” for picking Hall of Famers has always been the following: At the time of their retirement were they considered someone whose Hall of Fame selection seemed inevitable? Read the rest of this entry →