Cowboys adding scouting legend Gil Brandt to Ring of Honor - is Hall of Fame next?

Columnist

Fri, 2 Nov 2018, 2:03 pm

The man who is in large part responsible for getting some of the Dallas Cowboys’ best players to Dallas is joining the franchise’s Ring of Honor.

On Friday, Dallas owner/general manager Jerry Jones announced that Gil Brandt, who joined the Cowboys for their inaugural season in 1960 and remained until 1989, will be added to the Ring of Honor on November 29, at halftime of the team’s game against the New Orleans Saints.

Helped build America’s Team

Former Dallas Cowboys vice president of personnel Gil Brandt will be inducted into the team’s Ring of Honor in November. (Getty Images)

Brandt, 85, spent his career with Dallas as the franchise’s vice president of player personnel. Along with general manager Tex Schramm and coach Tom Landry, Brandt was a big part of building the Cowboys from startup to perennial contender — Dallas had 20 straight winning seasons from 1966-85, making five Super Bowl appearances in that time, winning two.

Schramm and Landry are already in the Ring of Honor.

Brandt is the 22nd member of the Ring. He was responsible for 15 of the 19 players already enshrined there coming to Dallas; seven of those players are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The godfather of modern scouting

Brandt, who still attends the scouting combine every year, is considered the godfather of modern scouting. He was one of the first to use computers in the course of scouting and talent evaluation, and also one of the first to use psychological tests on prospective players.

On his watch, Dallas also became the first team to look for football players in other sports, and were the first to look for players in other countries.

Cowboys coach Jason Garrett has known Brandt for much of his life; Garrett’s late father Jim worked for Brandt as a scout.

“He’s one of the revolutionary figures in our league and anybody who’s followed football closely understands that, how the Cowboys were built. The trio of Tom Landry, Tex Schramm and Gil Brandt is legendary,” Jason Garrett said. “An incredible model for how you do things. And if you look at the talent that those teams acquired through the years, it just seemed like they were ahead of everybody else and there’s a lot of specific detail about the technology they used and how they went about scouting players, but his impact was significant on this team and was significant throughout the league in terms of how to evaluate players, put teams together.”

Hall of Fame next?

The overdue Ring of Honor acknowledgement may be a precursor to Brandt entering the Hall of Fame.

In August, he and Denver owner Pat Bowlen were named finalists for the Hall’s Class of 2019 in the contributor category.

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who is a devoted football historian, said in 2017 that no one deserves to be in the Hall more than Brandt.

“Looking at Gil Brandt and the job that he did with the personnel, he certainly should be in the Hall of Fame based on his contributions to this game and contributions to the personnel and scouting side of it,” Belichick said. “He’d probably be the first guy I would put in there.”

The 48-member PFHOF selection committee will gather in Atlanta on February 2 to choose the Class of 2019.