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“NFL Hall of Fame-Hall of Shame Vote”

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The NFL Selection Committee has met, to come up with new candidates to place on the ballot for next year’s Pro Football Hall of Fame ballot, and no one is happy.

The Contributors section of the ballot, chooses two candidates for inclusion on the overall Hall of Fame list.

This year’s nominee was 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo, who built a franchise that won 5-Super Bowls over a decade and a half run.

This year’s committee has decided that former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, and Dallas owner Jerry Jones, will be on the ballot, to be voted on next February.

The decisions have not been received well at all, nationwide.

Tagliabue drove a league into amazing profit margins, with the ever increasing TV contracts they negotiated, the black out rules, and the demand for new stadiums, built with public funds, across the map. It was borderline extoriton.

Under his blueprint, owners pockets were lined with green, while cities tumbled into red-ink. It was under his reign, LA lost both its franchises in ugly divorces with Rams and Raiders fans.

It was the Tagliabue era that gave us the concussion crisis, the naming of Dr. Elliot Pellman to head the Brain Injury Committee, the 14-white papers that quoted “there is no link between concussions and brain damage issues”.

Years later, a 935M settlement to be paid out to dying players, and the families of players, who committed suicide, because of brain damage.

Tagliabue becomes known as the ‘Concussion Commisioner’. The world has alledged coverup for decades. There are no smoking guns, no paper trails, but suddenly a big money settlement from owners.

I doubt these owners found conscience after all these years. Connect the dots.

How could anyone not link one to the other, with Tagliabue and his people as the conduit of all this.

Jerry Jones goes in, as a businessman extraordinare, Valley Ranch, Texas Stadium, his mega financial deals. But his franchise is, and has been, a mess. Not since Jimmy Johnson’s Super Bowl seasons, and the short success of Barry Switzer, with the team he inherited from Johnson, have the Cowboys done anything.

More recently it seems Jerry Jones is running a ‘drug rehab’ center not a pro football team. Name a player in recent trouble, and his career has taken him thru the Cowboys star.

The committe bypassed a sentimental favorite, in Pat Bowlen, whose Broncos won Super Bowl rings, went to the dance 5-times, and won 13-division titles too.

Bowlen is dying of dementia. His accomplishments, with class, should have been recognized.

Longtime NFL ref Art McNally, former General Manager Bobby Beathard, linked to 4-Super Bowl teams, and innovative coach Don Coryell, who changed the game, were all bypassed.

When they vote on the ballot next February during Super Bowl week, it shall be interesting to see if Tagliabue-Jones get in.

I wouldn’t, for there are other people, good people on that NFL list, who deserve consideration for accomplishments, via a quality of standards above and beyond what the Jones-Tagliabue names bring to the table.

The voting media, in the know, knows how to vote. I think a shutout, a ‘no’ vote is the right thing to do.

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