"Contributor" Finalists

Many felt that the Pro Football Hall of Fame fell short in honoring the people that contributed to football but neither played nor coached the game. Owners, commissioners, general managers, scouts, officials. Folk of that sort. The Hall of Fame announced in August that a "contributor" category would be added to the voting process, starting with next year's Hall of Fame class. The first two nominees were announced on Wednesday.

Former general managers Bill Polian and Ron Wolf were chosen as finalists for the Hall of Fame Class of 2015. Nine voters spent Wednesday going through eleven possible nominees. Polian and Wolf made it through to the vote on January 31. They'll need 80 percent of that vote to make it to Canton.

Bill Polian put together three successful franchises. The Buffalo Bills of the early 1990s that earned trips to four consecutive Super Bowls. Then he accepted the challenge of jump starting the expansion Carolina Panthers. The team that he put together was in the NFC Championship game in their second season. He then turned a struggling Indianapolis Colts franchise into a consistent contender that won Super Bowl XLI. Drafting Peyton Manning with the first pick of the 1998 NFL Draft was a nice place to start.

Ron Wolf is probably best known for putting together a Green Bay Packers team that won Super Bowl XXXI. He hired Mike Holmgren to coach the team, traded for Brett Favre and signed Reggie White to lead the team. He might be best known as the Packers general manager but he spent the majority of his NFL career with the Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders. He was with the team from 1963-90, minus a brief run with the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 1975-78. He should make it to the Hall of Fame simply for working with Al Davis for all of those years.

The "contributor" nominees will be handled like the senior nominees have been handled for years. Their candidacy will be discussed and debated separate from the modern era finalists. Being part of the player/coaches vote is what has kept many worthy "contributor" candidates from being honored in Canton. This year's senior nominee is former Minnesota Vikings center Mick Tingelhoff. Wolf, Polian, and Tingelhoff have a solid chance to be chosen. This will probably result in an 8-member Hall of Fame Class of 2015.

Bill Polian and Ron Wolf are very deserving candidates but I really wish that the Hall of Fame voters would open their eyes to the early days of the NFL. Dayton Triangles owner Carl Storck is one of the founding fathers of the NFL and should be in the Hall of Fame. He served as Secretary-Treasurer for the league from 1921-39. He was the #2 to NFL President Joe Carr through most of the first twenty years of the league's existence. It was a minor miracle that the young football league even made it out of the 1920s. Storck's solid support of Carr and the league is a reason why we have an NFL today. He was the NFL President from 1939-41 following the sudden death of Carr. In the first twenty years of the league, Storck probably did more for the NFL than anyone not named Halas or Carr.