<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>The Hall of Fame class of 2007 will be the Year of the Rehash.The selectors have gotten used to shoo-ins. In January, Troy Aikman and Reggie White were chalk, and Harry Carson and Warren Moon were very strong candidates. Add two seniors to that and the quota was filled. Two years ago we could pencil in Steve Young and Dan Marino before we even filed into the room for our selection meeting. The year before that, John Elway and Barry Sanders ate up another two spots without much debate. Now it's a grab bag.Of the first-time eligibles coming up, only Bruce Matthews, who put in 19 seasons with the Houston Oilers and the Tennessee Titans, would be considered a strong candidate, and even he isn't what you'd call a shoo-in. I mean, I'll probably wind up voting for him, but if it comes down to Matthews against another guard, holdover Bob Kuechenberg, my vote goes to Kooch, for whom I've been pushing as long as I can remember.Not that the class of '07 is composed of stiffs. They're good players, but going down the list, the strongest candidates I can find -- Matthews, QB Randall Cunningham, guards Randall McDaniel and Steve Wisniewski, safety LeRoy Butler, tackle Erik Williams -- are not, to my mind, Hall of Famers, at least compared with the people who have lost out in recent years.Terrell Davis will generate much debate, and it will get emotional. The Denver rep in the room will talk about the way Davis came onto the scene from nowhere and led the Broncos to two Super Bowl victories. But the matter of longevity -- sadly, only four productive seasons out of an injury-shortened seven-year career -- will ding him.So for two hours or so we will rehash the same names that have been floating around for the last two or three years and have gotten bumped in the final round. You know who they are -- L.C. Greenwood, Claude Humphrey, Russ Grimm, Art Monk, my man Kuechenberg, Derrick Thomas, Michael Irvin, Thurman Thomas, Gary Zimmerman. A lot of strong names there; I'm not sure that Matthews will even make it to the final round of 15 and get his name entered in the debate.Who will I vote for? Most likely people I was very sorry to see miss out in recent seasons. Once again I will carry the Kuechenberg banner. I've spoken for him all five times his name has come up in the room as one of the finalists. He was the left guard on one of the finest middle-threes of all time, the Super Bowl Dolphins of the 1970s. Jim Langer, the center, and Larry Little, the right guard, were enshrined. I get the feeling the selectors said, "That's enough. Enough Miami linemen." And Kooch, the best of all of them, got stiffed.The second guy I've lobbied for, Joe Klecko, has never even reached the finals. He hasn't gotten enough votes in the prelims. He played defensive end, a power end, early in his career and was as sound against the run as any lineman in the game. The year before they started officially counting sacks, he collected 20.Then he moved inside, first to DT, then to the nose, played the two-gap, destroyed the double team, sacrificed his career as a sacker to become the most feared interior lineman in football. And he can't get into the selection room -- to enable me to get out my violin and sing his praises.I think Derrick Thomas, the K.C. sack machine who has lost out for the last two years as a finalist, will get my vote this time. Ditto Thurman Thomas, the engine that ran the Bills' K-Gun run-and-shoot offense and got them into four Super Bowls."You'll notice," Jim Kelly used to say, "they call it the run-and-shoot, with run first, not the other way around. Thurman is the guy who makes it go."So that looks like my four votes are used up, since I always vote for the two senior candidates, whom I'll mention presently. Where's Matthews? Oh, if history, not fairness, is any gauge, Klecko will get stiffed again, and that'll open up a spot on my dance card, either for Matthews or one of the also-rans ... not sure which one. I'll have to think it through.What I read at the league meetings is that a dark cloud of support is arising for Paul Tagliabue, the commissioner. He has been dinged in the prelims for the last four years, but look out this time. The fact that a person is retiring seems to generate all sorts of nostalgia among those who forgot why they didn't want him in the first place.The argument I've heard in his favor is: "Look at all the money he made the owners." My argument is that if you automatically enshrine every commissioner, it's like saying that the president of the U.S. automatically has to win the Nobel Prize. And besides, the big TV contracts were generated by the skill of the players performing on the field, not the guy who brokered the deal.I'll have lots more to say on this subject if this fear actually becomes a reality.Now we get to the seniors. Two of them can enter, out of a backlog of hundreds. I am no longer a member of the nine-man Seniors Selection Committee, so my contribution is limited to lobbying. That I have done, in the form of letters to the committee members who will meet this summer to come up with the two names they'll present to the selectors.The candidate I'm pushing is Clark Shaughnessy, who created, 66 years ago, the offense that remains pro football's standard modus operandi today. I'll ask the committee men to forgive me, please, if much of the language of my letter is repeated here, but I don't know how to say it any differently.The standard offense of the 1930s was a variety of the single-wing, basically a power formation. Ralph Jones, the Bears coach who relieved George Halas for three years (1930-32), mixed in a bit of the old T-formation, which he revived from football's primitive days, but it bore little resemblance to its modern counterpart. From time to time during the '30s Halas would mess with it. Then in the summer of 1940 Shaughnessy became a consultant.His basic formation became the T with a flexed end and a man in motion, who became a flanker, with wider splits on the line and quick-hitting dive plays -- quick openers, they were called. He worked with the offense, and then he took his formation out to Stanford and coached the Indians to an undefeated season and a Rose Bowl victory. The Bears, using Shaughnessy's modern T, beat the Redskins 73-0 in the NFL title game. The formation he installed is the one you see on Sundays.In the late '90s I interviewed Sid Luckman, who'd been the quarterback on that Chicago team, for a piece I did on six QBs who changed the game. I wanted, above all, to find out exactly whose formation it really was, Halas', Shaughnessy's, or even that of Ralph Jones. Sid was loyal to Halas. "It was a meeting of the minds," he said. But I hammered away at the poor guy ... I mean he was 81 years old ... and finally he said, "OK, it was Shaughnessy, it was all Shaughnessy, but don't quote me.""Not only the formation, but his whole system of play-calling," Bill Walsh told me when I interviewed him and asked who had most influenced him. "He drew it on a grid, in a way no one had ever done it before. He opened the window for all time. He was the father of it all."Shaughnessy took his offense to L.A. and modified it so that, in 1949, he had a designated tight end (Bob Shaw) to go with his flanker (Elroy Hirsch) and split end (Tom Fears), and added a spread formation with multiple receivers. And at the end of the year he got fired. Why? He was a guy given to nasty moods, and he didn't get along with his owner, Dan Reeves.Jumbo Joe Stydahar, who replaced him, was smart enough not to mess with Shaughnessy's attack, which in 1950 and '51 was the greatest offensive machine of all time, still holding the current per-game records for points, total yards and passing yards.Why wasn't his won-lost on a Hall of Fame level? His players didn't particularly like him. Neither did the writers, which might account for the fact that he hasn't been a Hall of Fame finalist since 1976. But I'd say that he ranks with Walsh, Landry and Lombardi as the greatest offensive thinkers of all time.One final point that I tried to make to the Seniors Committee: This seems to be a committee devoted, of late, to righting past wrongs. Enshrining Fritz Pollard and Benny Friedman in recent years was a terrific achievement. Bringing in Shaughnessy would make the act complete.My candidate No. 2 is someone I've pushed as a modern and now as a senior: Cliff Harris, the Dallas free safety. There are two kinds of free safeties. First, those whom I call range-safeties, Willie Wood of the Lombardi Packers for instance, and Paul Krause of the Vikings, people who covered a lot of ground, whose interceptions were high. Then there are killer-safeties, tops among them the Raiders' Jack Tatum, whom Al Davis termed "an obstructionist."No DB ever hit harder, but he didn't have the great coverage skills. Harris was a killer-safety type who could cover. He started as an NFL cornerback. He was probably the best combination of killer-safety and range-safety who ever played.</div>http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writ.../zim/index.html100% Agreed about Klecko, one of the most dominant defensive lineman ever continually getting stiffed is a joke.
Speaking of the HOF:<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Visser named 2006 Rozelle Award winnerJune 29, 2006CBS SPORTS' LESLEY VISSER WILL BE FIRST WOMAN RECOGNIZED BY PRO FOOTBALL HALL OF FAMELesley Visser is the 2006 recipient of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award. The award given annually by the Hall of Fame recognizes "long-time exceptional contributions to radio and television in professional football." This season will mark her 34th year covering the NFL as both a television reporter and print journalist. Visser will be the first woman to be recognized by the Pro Football Hall of Fame.Lesley_Visser"Recognition by the Pro Football Hall of Fame is beyond any dream I could have imagined for myself or any other woman when I saw my first game, the AFL Patriots against the Raiders in 1964," said Visser. "The passion I discovered on that day inspired my preparation over three decades as a writer and a broadcaster. I'm overwhelmed by being chosen the recipient of the Pete Rozelle Award. It is a tremendous honor to be connected with his great legacy and to the list of honorees that have gone before me."Previous winners of the award include Myron Cope, Van Miller, Don Criqui, John Madden, Roone Arledge, Ray Scott, Dick Enberg, Val Pinchbeck, Charlie Jones, Jack Buck, Frank Gifford, Pat Summerall, Curt Gowdy, Chris Schenkel, Ed Sabol, Lindsey Nelson and Bill McPhail.This fall Visser returns as a feature reporter for the THE NFL TODAY and CBS Sports' coverage of Super Bowl XLI. Last year she served as lead reporter for the Network's coverage of the NFL, teaming with CBS Sports' No. 1 announce team of Jim Nantz and Phil Simms. Visser worked her 28th NCAA Men's Basketball Championship last March, having worked the tournament for the Boston Globe, ESPN and CBS. Visser was honored by the American Women in Radio and Television, Inc. in June 2006 as a recipient of a Gracie Allen Award which celebrates programming created for women, by women and about women, as well as individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the industry. In 2005 she won the Pop Warner female achievement award and was inducted into the New England Sports Museum Hall of Fame, along with Boston Celtics legend Bob Cousy and the 1980 United States Olympic Hockey team.Visser was a reporter for THE SUPER BOWL TODAY, CBS Sports' Super Bowls XXXV and XXXVIII pre-game broadcasts. She also contributes reports for CBS News and served as a reporter for HBOs' "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel." She spent nearly seven years with ABC Sports and was a sideline reporter for "Monday Night Football," becoming the first woman assigned to the series and the first woman ever to report from the sidelines during a Super Bowl. While at ABC Sports, Visser served as a reporter for college football bowl games and NFL playoff games. She also contributed to ABC's coverage of Triple Crown horse racing, "ABC's Wide World of Sports," Major League Baseball, including the World Series, figure skating, Special Olympics, skiing, the Pro Bowl, and an ABC series "A Passion to Play." She hosted the network's coverage of the "Millennium Tournament of Roses Parade."She returned to CBS Sports in August 2000 as a contributor to THE NFL TODAY, college basketball, figure skating and the U.S. Open Tennis Championships. Visser covered the NCAA Final Four and Super Bowl for ESPN. She joined CBS Sports in 1984 and became full-time in 1987. Her assignments included the NBA, college basketball, MLB, college football, U.S. Open Tennis Championships and the Winter Olympics, and she was a regular on THE NFL TODAY. In 1992 Visser became the first woman to handle the post-game presentation ceremony at the Super Bowl and in 1989 she covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, focusing on how sports would change in East Germany. Visser became the first woman sportscaster to carry the Olympic Torch when she was honored in 2004 by the International Olympic Committee as a "pioneer and standard-bearer." Visser is the only sportscaster in history who has worked on the network broadcast of the Final Four, Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals, Triple Crown, Olympics, U.S. Open and World Figure Skating Championship.Visser began her career in sports journalism in 1974 as a member of the Boston Globe sports staff on a grant from the Carnegie Foundation, two years later she was assigned to cover the New England Patriots, becoming the first ever female NFL beat writer. While at the Boston Globe she covered the NCAA Final Four, Super Bowl, NBA Finals, World Series, Wimbledon, the Olympics and college football.Visser has been honored with the Compass Award for "changing the paradigm of her business" and was one of the 100 luminaries commemorating the 75th anniversary of the CBS Television Network in 2003. She was named "WISE Woman of the Year" in 2002 and voted the "Outstanding Women's Sportswriter in America" in 1983 and won the "Women's Sports Foundation Award for Journalism" in 1992. In 1999 she won the first AWSM Pioneer Award. Visser earned her bachelor's degree in English from Boston College. She was born Sept. 11 in Quincy, Mass and is married to FOX/Turner sportscaster Dick Stockton. They reside in Boca Raton, Fla.Previous Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award Winners1989 - Bill McPhail1990 - Lindsey Nelson1991 - Ed Sabol1992 - Chris Schenkel1993 - Curty Gowdy1994 - Pat Summerall1995 - Frank Gifford1996 - Jack Buck1997 - Charlie Jones1998 - Val Pinchbeck1999 - Dick Enberg2000 - Ray Scott2001 - Roone Arledge2002 - John Madden2003 - Don Criqui2004 - Van Miller2005 - Myron Cope</div>http://www.profootballhof.com/enshrinement...p?story_id=2121
If Bruce Matthews isn't a shoo-in, then nobody is. Dude didn't miss a start in like 17 straight seasons, played (I think) 20 years with one team, and made 14 straight pro bowls.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Hall of Fame game sold outTue, 4 Jul 2006 06:24:47 -0700The Canton Repository reports tickets for the AFC-NFC Hall of Fame Game between the Oakland Raiders and Philadelphia Eagles Aug. 6 at Fawcett Stadium have sold out. Although a sellout for the enshrinement ceremony is anticipated, a limited number of tickets remain available. The Class of 2006 is composed of QB Troy Aikman, LB Harry Carson, head coach John Madden, QB Warren Moon, DE Reggie White and OL Rayfield Wright.</div>http://www.kffl.com/hotw/nfl
