There has been a lot of frustration on the part of those finalists who didn’t make the cut for the Pro Football Centennial slate. Notably the omissions of Raiders head coach Tom Flores and wide receiver Cliff Branch and Cowboys wide receiver Drew Pearson.
The backlash is deserved because those three are most definitely worthy of enshrinement. But amid all the doom and gloom there is a silver lining for this silver domed trio.
Recently longtime Cowboys beat writer, and Hall of Fame senior committee member Rick Gosselin spoke with ESPN Central Texas about the potential residual effect of the Centennial class for those finalists who were left out of the class.
The whole point of the Centennial class was to try and clean out some of the backlogs of worthy Hall of Famers who were pushed further into the background in favor of greats who come up for eligibility each year. People are so enamored with who is a “first-ballot Hall of Famer” that they forget there is an ever-lengthening waiting list that deserves attention.
“This is long overdue,” Gosselin said of the larger Centennial class. “I’m on the senior committee and I see the logjam that we have. There were 68 All-Decade players in the senior pool and 61 have never been discussed. And we’re only doing one or two at a time, so there was no way to break that logjam. So, I talked to the Hall and said the 100th anniversary would be a great time to do something special. They came up with the Centennial class where we have ten seniors, two coaches, and three contributors and kind of mirror the first class in 1963.”
Gosselin was asked and spoke specifically of Drew Pearson, whose video reaction has gone viral, showing his frustration over waiting to see all the players who made the Centennial slate to find out he wasn’t among them. It was emotional and powerful and gives you a window into how flawed the overall process of how the Hall of Fame lets in their members.
Many worthy potential inductees get left out due to arbitrary rules for annual voting that limits the number of players and requires a certain percentage of votes to make that cut. Pearson has fallen victim to this like many others.
“This is the first time he’s ever been a finalist,” Gosselin said of Pearson. “I tell the people here in Dallas, until you’re a finalist, you’re not a candidate because no one discusses you until you’re a finalist. So, Drew is now in the mix. I think going forward, he’s got a better chance now than he did a week ago, because now he’s the only first-team All-Decade player in the game’s modern era that isn’t in. Sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, they’re all in but Drew. First team All-Decade guy, that is a rubber stamp for Canton. And Drew is just the lone ranger, he’s the only guy left. I would hope that in the next year or two that’s resolved.”
The benefit to this is all these guys were among a smaller group of finalists, so now they are fresher in the voters’ minds. Out of sight, out of mind is a bad place to be when trying to get in the Hall of Fame.
Come this time next year, when the senior committee decides on the one or two players they will nominate for a Hall of Fame, there seems a high likelihood those nominations will come from the list of Centennial slate finalists who were left out.
That’s just ten players and eight coaches. If that continued, the list would be smaller each year and therefore the odds go up. The list is supposed to get smaller, as opposed to for year the list getting longer than they can sift through.
It’s a shame that the likes of Tom Flores and Cliff Branch were still shut out even with what seemed like a no-brainer decision, but this may not be their last chance. Their chances may actually go up now. Potentially.
As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats. Jimmy Johnson and Bill Cowher got in among the coaches. Prior to this, they had left out, along with Tom Flores, possibly because they were all splitting votes. Johnson, Flores, and George Seifert were the only 2-time Super Bowl-winning head coaches not yet in the Hall of Fame. Now it’s just Flores and Seifert. And Seifert wasn’t even among the finalists.
Likewise, Branch may have been splitting votes with Harold Carmichael who played in the same era and had similar numbers. Carmichael got in, so if they were splitting votes, they will no longer. Though it sounds like maybe now he’ll be contending with Pearson. But since the Cowboys got two members of the Centennial class (Jimmy Johnson and Cliff Harris) and the Raiders got none, if there’s any justice in the world Cliff Branch would be considered ahead of Pearson. Though at least for Pearson’s sake, he may be able to put on the yellow jacket. Something Branch didn’t live to experience.
Sorry, I got doom and gloom again. I’ll try to work on that.
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