You see Steve Brener around the fights. Good guy. Nothing flamboyant about him. Don’t be deceived. Brener is big, very big, on the West Coast in his dodge, which is public relations, particularly as it can be applied to sports.

So, on the afternoon of the meeting of the selection board of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, on which I am privileged to serve, I am coming out of a room on the second floor of the Miami Beach Convention Center, and there is Brener. It turns out he has an interest in what has been going on, named Michael Irvin.

I know not who has retained Brener — the Cowboys, perhaps, or ESPN or even Irvin himself — but Brener has been investing his energies, which are considerable, to escorting Irvin through the Canton facility’s portals. By now, you should know that Irvin, this man whom Greg Cote of the Miami Herald colorfully, and I think accurately, characterizes as “one of sports’ great, preening peacocks,” has been duly installed in those hallowed corridors, and I am wondering about where we are in this procedure.

Excuse me, but it seems here that involving a heavyweight such as Brener in the selection process is going a bit too far. How a player is marketed should have nothing to do with him either gaining admittance to the Hall or failing to gain admittance. He’s a football player, not a tube of toothpaste or a mouthwash. Enough with sales pitches.

What I’m getting to is that I would prefer that a man be adjudged off what he has accomplished without the stimulus that a P.R. whiz can generate. I don’t know what influence that Brener had on the Hall’s electorate, if any, but I do know that on the Friday preceding the selection get-together, the telephone rang in my hotel room, and it was Troy Aikman on the line.

The word had got around that a year ago I had spoken in opposition to Irvin’s candidacy, not because of his conduct, which has not always been exemplary, but because on too many occasions when I was observing him, he would be pushing off on defenders while he was tracing his pass routes.

In my heart, I must admit, I did harbor misgivings about Irvin as a resident of the Hall because of his off-the-field peccadillos, but the Hall’s position is that there is no such thing as a bad boy or a candidate for induction who has been overly naughty. Father Flanagan took the same stance when he founded Boys Town. Spencer Tracy was great in the part.

Anyhow, I welcomed Aikman’s call. For openers, I advised him that he was going to have to disabuse me of my thinking that Irvin’s successes, and he had some, were founded in large part on putting his hands on defenders and shoving. You know what? I was so flattered that Aikman, fine quarterback that he was, would take the time to contact me — and he talked persuasively — that when it came time the following day to write Irvin’s name on a ballot, I checked the “Yes” box and not the “No” box. Yes, Irvin should be permitted to take a place among football’s gods.

Perhaps I should not have said that. What occurs behind the closed doors of the selectors’ session is supposed to be privileged. Too often, it is — for about 10 minutes. Then the word gets out. There are moles in that room, I am convinced of it. Hush-hush soon loses its hushes. I have become aware that the high mucky-mucks of the NFL had been advised of every word that had been spoken within minutes of the meeting’s adjournment.

Whatever, since I cast my vote for Irvin, I have been having second thoughts. Did I act properly? Was I caught up in a P.R. effort? Should the Hall welcome individuals who, while they excelled on the field, were less impressive off it?

One day before Irvin received what he termed a “validation” from the board of selectors, commissioner Roger Goodell in his “state of the league” news conference had decried the incidence of misdeeds by NFL players. What sort of message was the league sending by admitting a person with Irvin’s personal history?

Not a favorable one, I fear. I am thinking now of some of those enshrined in Canton. John McNally, known as “Johnny Blood,” a noted roisterer who was a member of the Hall’s founding class. Lawrence Taylor, fierce on the field, hardly a member of the Boy Scouts of America off it. Joe Namath. His saloon, Bachelors III, was frequented by guys with very hard eyes.

I could go on. Guys aren’t welcomed into the Hall because they know how to handle tea cups in drawing rooms. If the persons I have cited were invited to walk up the steps at Canton, it would be an injustice to impose a citizenship clause on the circumstances for admission, but sometimes steps must be taken that are not wholly fair.

My position: Amend the Hall’s bylaws and write into them a stipulation that when a player’s credentials for admission are weighed, he is to be examined as a whole person, for what he represents in society as well as what sort of a football player he was.

Moving on, what did you think of the Super Bowl, other than that it was wet? Not one of the better games in the series, I thought. It reminded me of V, also in Miami, which was strewn with turnovers before the then-Baltimore Colts got past Dallas 16-13 on a 32-yard Jim O’Brien field goal with five seconds to play.

This time Peyton Manning got the car following the Colts’ 29-17 conquest of the Bears. There should have been two cars, I thought, and they should have presented one to Joseph Addai and the other to Dominic Rhodes. Manning was efficient, nothing more. Tony Dungy’s side won because, in the rain, Addai and Rhodes between them could amass 190 yards rushing.

Anyhow, it’s how I saw it.

Jerry Magee has covered pro football for the San Diego Union-Tribune since 1961 and for PFW since its inception in 1967. 

The above content is featured from our Pro Football Weekly print edition — Issue 30.

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