-- The Star-Telegram's Clarence Hill reports that Paul Pasqualoni may remain as tight ends coach, with the team looking elsewhere for another LB coach. There is some concern about limiting the number of changes to the offensive staff.
-- Commissioner Paul Tagliabue made the point during his state-of-the-league address this week that Dallas' Thanksgiving Day game would remain on Fox during its regular 3 pm Central time slot.
-- Former Cowboys LB Randall Godfrey is ready to end a ten year career and apparently wants to sign a one day contract in order to retire as a Cowboy.
-- Star-Telegram columnist Randy Galloway claims he's been bombarded with calls today claiming the Cowboys Hall of Fame bias (which he dubs "Cow Bias) is done, with the election of Troy Aikman and Rayfield Wright.
Galloway correctly laughs at these suggestions, claiming Cow-Bias won't be done until those other deserving players join their brothers in the Hall.
Amen. What Randy doesn't consider is that the din he and his fellow Dallas-area writers created probably helped get Wright elected. As I mentioned in a thread, Wright made the final six two years ago but was inexplicably black-balled. So were Michael Irvin and fellow 2006 inductee Harry Carson last year.
Carson finally made the Hall on his 13th try. Wright on his 15th. What changed between 2004 and today but the negative scrutiny Galloway and friends gave the election committee? Elector Len Pasquarelli of ESPN called them "small minded" and "typically ill-informed" and assured them their noise wouldn't change the voting.
Right.
Keep up the noise, Randy. Those cultured snobs (insert sarcasm here) on the committee will never acknowledge it, but they didn't like the scrutiny. Banging the drum will get more worthy players in, from all teams. Sports Illustrated's Paul Zimmerman, a long-time critic of the voting process, quoted fellow electors who said today's crop was perhaps the best Hall class ever, in part because so many deserving players didn't make it.
Had the Einsteins on the committee not snubbed Wright, Carson, Bob Hayes and Michael Irvin and elected just fourteen modern players in the previous four years, an average of less than four per year, several of those players snubbed today would be in Canton.