Ten Things I Think I Think

1. I think these are my quick-hit thoughts of the NFL weekend:

a. Are you kidding me, Marty Schottenheimer? You actually looked at Rodney Harrison the football player after the 2002 season and judged that he couldn't help your team? Sheesh. The guy is a monster.

b. There's something about Mike Vrabel and big games. He just makes huge plays every single time the bright lights are on.

c. I don't get illegal contact, Mike Pereira. Look at the tape of the first touchdown for the Eagles. With the line of scrimmage at the New England seven, Terrell Owens comes off and runs at a New England corner. At the goal line, Owens gets leveled, and is dropped like a ton of bricks. That's seven yards. The bump zone is five. Either that's illegal contact on the offense or defense, but it has to be illegal contact on somebody.

d. Great patience and touch by Donovan McNabb on the McNabb-to-L.J. Smith touchdown throw.

e. Derrick Burgess is the now-discovered gem of this postseason.

f. The Patriots need to upgrade from injury replacement Brandon Gorin at right tackle, but they know that. He's just not quick enough.

g. Vrabel: five career catches, two in Super Bowls ... both for touchdowns.

h. How does Todd Pinkston miss significant time in this game while getting an IV for cramps? How in the world in a player's biggest game ever does he not stay hydrated?

2. I think I can't help thinking a couple of not-very-nice things about Emmitt Smith's honor right now. As of last Tuesday, Dallas owner Jerry Jones was on board to fly in for Smith's retirement press conference on Thursday. John Clayton reported the Smith retirement news on ESPN. Among Smith's friends and former Cowboys teammates here for the Super Bowl, it was an open secret late Tuesday afternoon that Clayton was absolutely right, and Smith was retiring, and one of the former 'Boys told me so before we taped Inside the NFL on Tuesday night. And so Smith twice misled The Dallas Morning News, once Monday and once Tuesday. I mean, why? Why not say, "No comment,'' or "Come to the press conference Thursday and see?'' I had flashbacks to two summers ago, when I quoted Smith as saying that playing on the downtrodden Cowboys in their awful 2002 season made him feel like a diamond among trash in a story for SI. He said I misquoted him. We were sitting together on a couch at training camp in Flagstaff, Ariz., when he said it. But Smith turned around and denied it, saying I had screwed him. And he kept saying that, until I finally had to call the team's PR guy and tell him to try to find someone in my 14 years at SI who ever thought he was misquoted in a story of mine, which he wouldn't be able to find. And I told him it would be a good idea if Smith stopped calling me a liar. Great player, good guy, occasional problem with the truth.

3. I think there was probably as much quality discussion in the Hall of Fame room Saturday morning as I've heard in more than 10 years as a HOF voter. In the end, I voted for all six of the finalists -- the four who made it (Bennie Friedman, Fritz Pollard, Steve Young, Dan Marino) and the two who got voted down (Harry Carson, Michael Irvin). Marino was a given, Young easy for many reasons -- he's the most efficient quarterback of all time, he had a six-touchdown Super Bowl, he's the best passer-runner of all time, he twice beat out Joe Montana for the starting 49ers job. The old-timers' cases hadn't really been aired fairly. Friedman without question was the best quarterback of the first 15 years of the NFL; he had a 20-touchdown season throwing what amounted to a honeydew melon of a football in those days. Pollard had an unusual career, but let me put it in perspective this way: In 1921, he was probably the best runner in the game, he was a player-coach of the 8-3-1 and third-place Akron Pros, and he was black. So imagine this: A player with the skill of LaDainian Tomlinson and the coaching brain of Bill Cowher, doing his job while fans yelled racial epithets. And imagine what a presence he must have had to make players of his day listen to him and follow him. I'm just sorry I never got to meet such an extraordinary man. Addressing the five questions that seemed to emerge from Saturday's HOF dust-ups:

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a. Is there a Cowboys conspiracy? Call me naïve. I don't see it. I don't ever hear a peer in that room talking crap about Dallas players, or saying the Cowboys don't deserve the credit they get in league history. But let's remember seven guys from their nine-year run of five early Super Bowls are in the Hall, and I'm not counting short-timers Herb Adderley, Mike Ditka and Forrest Gregg, even though they played for the Cowboys in Super Bowls. The seven: Tom Landry, Tex Schramm, Bob Lilly, Mel Renfro, Roger Staubach, Randy White and Tony Dorsett. To give this some perspective, the 49ers were in five Super Bowls during a 14-year span, and have had four guys (Bill Walsh, Montana, Ronnie Lott, Young) make the Hall. Remember, Troy Aikman and Smith will certainly get in during the next five Hall votes, and Irvin is likely to get in someday. That would be 10 Hall of Famers for one franchise, and except for the largesse of the Steelers' Hall contingent, I don't see how the Cowboys are getting jobbed.

b. Will Art Monk ever get in? Problematic. My views on Monk have been well-documented (I am not a Monk supporter), and he didn't make the cut to the final six. This means, almost certainly, that 10 or more voters in the group of 39 don't think he belongs. That number could be 15 or 16; we don't know as voters, because exact totals are never released to us. Even if I was replaced in the room by Dan Snyder, I can't see the result for Monk being any different. Monk's plus is a big one: when he retired, he was the leading pass-catcher ever, with 940 receptions. But over the last 20 years, the number of receivers with 600 or more catches has risen from four to 34, and so a good deal of voters in the room think, How important is the total of receptions? What may doom Monk is a perceived lack of impact with the great running game the Redskins had and the other deep-threat receivers like Gary Clark in the Joe Gibbs era, plus the fact he was all-pro twice and a Pro Bowler three times in 16 years. My feeling is Monk will have a very hard road.

c. How can a player get to the final six and then not get in? Some voters feel if a candidate is good enough to survive into the final six he should be automatic. Not me. I judge whether I think a player is a Hall of Famer, and if I don't think he is, I'm not going to change my mind just because he gets into the final six.

d. What's the problem with Harry Carson? For the second time, the Giants' inside linebacker from their recent glory days got to the final six and got dinged. The best all-around linebacker Bill Belichick has ever coached wrote a letter to the Hall asking that his name be removed from consideration, and though that got some airing in the room, I'd be stunned if anyone took that into consideration. One of the voters, Rick Gosselin of Dallas, said after the meeting he couldn't reconcile the fact that on the NFL's team of the '80s, Carson didn't make it and Carl Banks did. Valid, I guess, but Banks is an outside linebacker and Carson inside; they're not competing against each other for a spot on the team.

e. How can such a good class of candidates get only four players elected? My question exactly. Too many good and deserving players, even beyond the six finalists, got whacked this time around. I think we're creating a bottleneck of good players that won't be easy to thin with the strong future classes of players coming up. It's easy to say, "Well, Irvin will get in eventually,'' but with stud receivers growing on trees these days, the competition grows every year. What if Irvin, Monk and Andre Reed ever go head-to-head? I favor Irvin easily among that troika, but the addition of Reed will slightly water down the support of both guys, I would guess.

4. I think if Paul McCartney went on tour, I'd buy a ticket right now. Sometimes you forget how good a guy like is until you hear him sing Drive My Car and Hey Jude.

a. Coffeenerdness: Per-capita Starbucks stores can't be much more concentrated in any non-metropolitan area than the three in the two-mile stretch of the south side of Jacksonville. Reminded me of the Best in Show scene where the two dog nerds spied each other while Starbucksing across the street from one other.

b. Tried, and I think failed, to convert Rick Reilly to a House fan over the weekend. Try it, big fella. You'll like it. Best new show on TV.

5. I have no problem with Jacksonville as a Super Bowl site. Not my favorite, or even close, and sort of a Hartford with palm trees, but anyplace with a few good restaurants, which this place has, and decent logistics is fine with me. I mean, who cares about sportswriters bitching anyway?

6. I think Donovan McNabb came up small. He could have had four straight passes picked late in the first quarter if penalties and a drop didn't help him out. This is a big stage, and everything was on his shoulders. He had a C-minus game.

7. I think everyone in the press box was aghast at Andy Reid's clock management late in the game. With 5:40 left, and his team down by 10, Reid showed no urgency whatsoever to get his team into the no-huddle. Needing two scores in five minutes, it was ludicrous to be that lackadaisical. If the Eagles had scored with three minutes to go with their two timeouts left, they would have had a choice -- onside kick or regular kick. But running nine plays in three minutes and 20 seconds, when you don't have time to spare ... I mean, it's like Reid didn't trust McNabb to run the hurry-up offense.

8. I think it was a strange game. Tied at halftime, tied after three quarters, and not really the suspense or drama of a good Super Bowl. Maybe what was missing was a signature play. But there wasn't a single moment that took your breath away.

9. I think the Patriots just smother people. They don't let teams breathe.

10. I think it's pretty strange that America doesn't know Deion Branch, who has 21 catches in the last two Super Bowls. But America will catch up. That's what winning the MVP will do to a guy.