Scorecard January 19, 1998

Just Desserts for Switzer

The Barry Switzer who should be remembered by Dallas Cowboys fans isn't the coach who went 28-9 in his first two seasons and won Super Bowl XXX in January 1996, but the coach who in his last two seasons went 17-17 and won only one postseason game. He's the coach who brought zero innovations to the Cowboys, even after they began slumping last season. He's the coach who, aside from an unsuccessful fourth-down gamble against the Philadelphia Eagles in 1995, made no memorable calls. He's the coach who deserved to be "allowed to resign," as Cowboys owner Jerry Jones put it at the press conference last week announcing Switzer's departure.

Switzer outdid other NFL coaches in two respects: a cavalier attitude toward his job and a lax approach to team discipline. He missed important team meetings on more than one Saturday, not only to watch his son Doug play quarterback for Missouri Southern but also to have dinner with old friends like David Boren, a former U.S. senator from Oklahoma. He allowed Dallas offensive linemen to get grossly overweight in the weeks before Super Bowl XXX because, according to at least one Cowboy, he stopped mandatory weigh-ins late in the season. And in the early morning hours of the Saturday before that game, Switzer was partying hard in his hotel suite.

The championship Dallas won under Switzer came about more because of astute scouting and drafting before he got there than Switzer's coaching. By and large Switzer relaxed in the off-season; unlike his predecessor Jimmy Johnson, he rarely went on scouting missions.

Switzer talked last week of wanting time to smell the roses in his retirement. Well, that's pretty much what he's been doing for the last four years.

One-Man Hall of Infamy

At its meeting on March 31, the NHL Hall of Fame board of directors is scheduled to consider whether Alan Eagleson, the disgraced onetime czar of hockey, should be bounced from the Hall of Fame. Why wait? Convene an emergency meeting and kick the bum out now. Hall of Fame defenseman Brad Park, one of the many players hurt by the blue line robber baron, said it eloquently: "I will not be on the wall with that man."

With the plea agreement made last week in Boston and Toronto, Eagleson, who ruled the NHL players' union from 1967 to '91, gave up the arrogant protestations of innocence he had been making since he was indicted on 34 charges of labor fraud, racketeering, fraud, embezzlement, obstruction and attempted obstruction in 1994. He pleaded guilty to three counts of mail fraud stemming from his years of allegedly mishandling players' funds as both an agent and the head of the players' union. The plea resulted in a fine of about $700,000 and an 18-month prison sentence. He could serve as little as three months.

Throwing Eagleson out of the Hall, into which he was inducted in 1989, won't compensate for those disgracefully light penalties, but it would help. The manner with which he lined his pockets with union funds and colluded with team owners to shortchange his players in collective bargaining negotiations was one of the greatest frauds in the history of sport. Eagleson, who not only served as the union boss but also was the agent for dozens of NHLers, stole from players who trusted him with everything from car wash vouchers to million-dollar mortgages. Now his guilty pleas will become the centerpiece of a class action by former players (against Eagleson, former NHL officials and the owners of the 22 teams then in existence) contending they lost more than $300 million in salaries as a result of Eagleson's actions. The players are asking for triple that amount in damages, and Eagleson's admissions will make it difficult for the defendants to maintain their innocence.

If the Hall needs someone to take Eagleson's place, we have a nominee: Russ Conway, the investigative journalist from the Lawrence (Mass.) Eagle-Tribune whose seven years of dogged work finally brought Eagleson's malfeasance to light.