Brandt finally joins Landry, Schramm in Canton
DALLAS — Gil Brandt is finally going into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, nearly three decades after Tom Landry and Tex Schramm were enshrined a year apart for their roles in the rise of America's Team, the Dallas Cowboys.
If the former player personnel director who helped build one of the most iconic brands in sports ever felt overshadowed by his more famous coach and general manager, it doesn't really matter now that the triumvirate from the club's first 29 years is about to be together in Canton, Ohio.
And by t he way, Brandt doesn't feel overshadowed.
“I think we all got credit,” said Brandt, who will be inducted Saturday. “And I think Tex rightfully so got more credit than Tom and myself. Because he was a very media savvy person. When somebody from Sports Illustrated called, they didn't talk to Tom, they didn't talk to
me. They talked to Tex.
“But it was not a concern of mine at all.”
Brandt was voted in as a contributor mostly because of the innovations he helped introduce in scouting in the 1960s, but also because of how active
the 86-year-old remains in the NFL so many years after Dallas owner Jerry Jones fired him following the 1989 draft.
The dismissal of Brandt came a couple of months after Jones dumped Landry as soon as he bought the team. Schramm's
resignation quickly followed.
The Hall of Fame wasted little time recognizing those two. Landry was inducted in 1990, 10 years before he died. Schramm's 1991 enshrinement came 12 years before his death. The trio reached five Super Bowls, winning two.
“How could you not be overshadowed by Tex and Tom?” asked a chuckling Cliff Harris, a former safety who was among the small-college players who became All-Pros after being targeted by Brandt. “Everybody was.”
It's appropriate that Brandt's second career in pro football started with the internet and was fueled further by social media. He helped the Cowboys bring the computer age to the NFL
soon after the franchise's birth in 1960.
The Cowboys assigned values to physical — and mental — characteristics of players. Brandt likes to tell the story of how Vince Lombardi chided them by asking if their computer had broken down while Dallas held up the 1964 draft waiting for medical information on Mel Renfro before taking the future Hall of Fame defensive back in the second round.
“I think Gil, in terms of quantifying so many things about scouting, was really ahead of his time,” said Calvin Hill, a running back taken in the first round in 1969. “They could look at all the individual things that go into making a player and a teammate and tried to quantify it.”