This is old news, from a Q&A at the beginning of the month, but it's worth responding to. Months ago I emailed Rick Gosselin of the Dallas Morning News to engage him in a discussion about Art Monk and the Hall of Fame. Rick had apparently been verbally assaulted or something by Redskins fans and thus refused to discuss the matter, essentially saying that he's made a decision not to discuss it with fans. Fine.
Hat tip to Art Monk Hall of Fame Campaign, which does outstanding work, and always tracks down pertinent media articles on Art. From a Dallas News Rick Gosselin Q&A:
Chuck
Rick Gosselin: The wide receiver queue is getting jammed up now with Monk and Andre Reed already there and both Cris Carter and Tim Brown soon to enter. We've had lively discussions about Monk and he's been close. I think we as committee are having a difficult time defining what a Hall of Fame receiver is. Is it statistics? Is it championships? Is it impact? Monk played on three Super Bowl championship teams and wasn't a Pro Bowl receiver in any of those three seasons. Yet the Redskins had a Pro Bowl wide receiver in each of those three seasons - Charlie Brown in 1982 and Gary Clark in both 1987 and 1991. I can't imagine the Cowboys winning a Super Bowl in the 1990s without Michael Irvin as their go-to guy and Pro Bowl wide receiver.
It's an especially fascinating metric given that the two people who are apparently complicating the business of nominating WRs along with Art Monk never actually won Super Bowls, at all, and thus never won Super Bowls in seasons where they were also Pro Bowlers. It's also true of these guys:
Steve Largent (never won a Super Bowl)
Lance Alworth (won a Super Bowl in 1971, was not a Pro Bowler that year, though)
Fred Biletnikoff (won the 1976 Super Bowl two years after he went to his last Pro Bowl)
Charlie Joiner (never won a Super Bowl)
James Lofton (never won a Super Bowl)
Don Maynard (never won a Super Bowl)
Our own Charlie Taylor who, unfortunately, never won a Super Bowl
And those guys are all in the Hall of Fame. If the committee really is "having a difficult time defining what a Hall of Fame receiver is" that's apparently a new problem that seemed to arise shortly after Art Monk retired from football. This entire metric is crazy for additional reasons though; Pro Bowls don't necessarily prove the value of a player to a team. Art Monk did a lot of things better than his peers that don't get you a lot of Pro Bowl love, blocking, for instance. Moving chains helps win football games, but it doesn't always lead to gaudy numbers (though, thankfully, in Monk's case it did).