Hall of Famers finally get their due
Trey Wingo, who hosts ESPN's "NFL Live," said today is his favorite day of the year.
Wingo will anchor ESPN's three-hour telecast of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2008 beginning at 6 p.m., from Canton, Ohio. He will be joined by analyst Tom Jackson.
ESPN's Chris Berman will emcee the ceremony, honoring the six new members - Fred Dean, Darrell Green, Art Monk, Emmitt Thomas, Andre Tippett, and Gary Zimmerman.
Wingo said this year's inductees are special for several reasons.
"It's about perseverance for one guy - [the Redskins'] Art Monk, who in my opinion should've gotten in a long time ago," said Wingo. "This is a guy who was one of the more dominant receivers of his era. At the time he retired, he had almost every single substantial receiving record for career numbers - except for touchdowns - than anybody else and he was a wide receiver on a predominantly running team."
In the case of Broncos offensive lineman Zimmerman, it's a chance to celebrate a guy who spent his career in the trenches.
"He's the only offensive lineman ever to be named on the All-Decade Team of the 1980s and the All-Decade Team of the '90s," said Wingo. "That's a pretty good indication of what your peers think of your work.
"It's a pretty unglamorous position [at left tackle]. He is finally going in after a few years' wait. So that's special to me."
Wingo said he can only imagine the recognition Patriots standout linebacker Tippett would've received had the circumstances during his career been different.
"Lawrence Taylor got all the headlines but Tippett was pretty darn good," said Wingo. "I thought he was a lot like Lawrence Taylor. The Patriots are now clearly the glamour franchise of the NFL, but then they weren't the standard-bearer. They were the little team in New England and I think that sort of hurt Andre's visibility. Had he been playing on a Bill Belichick team with Romeo Crennel as the defensive coordinator, he would've been a superstar."
Wingo expressed support for all the inductees, but said he would like to change the number of people with a vote. There are well over 500 voters for Major League Baseball but just 44 for the NFL.
"[The number of NFL voters], to me, is far too few people to sample when you're talking about the highest achievement for individual play you can have in the NFL. The Super Bowl means everything for team play, but whether or not you're a Hall of Famer should have nothing to do with how many Super Bowl rings you have because you have to be on a really good team to be in a Super Bowl. You can be a really good player on a lousy team and no one will even notice.
"The sample of people who decides who is the elite of the elite is far too few. I think there are far too many in baseball."
Cervasio on NESN
Tina Cervasio, the former Red Sox sideline reporter for NESN who is now at MSG Network, will be back on NESN during the network's coverage of the Little League New England and Mid-Atlantic Regional Tournaments beginning Wednesday. MSG and NESN are partnering for six games: three on Wednesday with Game 1 at 11 a.m., two New England semifinals Thursday at 4 and 7 p.m., and a Mid-Atlantic semifinal Friday at 3 p.m. MSG Network's John Giannone will handle the play-by-play with NESN's Lou Merloni as the color analyst and Cervasio as sideline reporter . . . If you need a summer college basketball fix, tune in to tomorrow's special edition of "ONE2ONE" on CBS College Sports Network at 8:30 p.m. Greg Amsinger will sit down with Tennessee women's coach Pat Summitt and Kansas men's coach Bill Self. Summitt and Self led their respective teams to NCAA Division 1 championships last season. Summitt discusses her decision to end her team's annual season series against UConn as well as coaching Candace Parker, whom she considers the top women's player of all time. Self talks about Mario Chalmers's dramatic 3-point shot in the title game and defeating former Kansas bench boss Roy Williams . . . CBS will air the Bridgestone Invitational, which features 47 of the top 50 players based on the official World Golf rankings. Players include British Open winner Padraig Harrington, Phil Mickelson, Adam Scott, Ernie Els, Sergio Garcia, and Vijay Singh. Coverage today and tomorrow, live from Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio, will run from 1-6 p.m.
