Brice Cherry: One voter's take on who should be next for Texas Sports Hall of Fame (Part 1) (2024)

One day last week, I was sitting in the Tom Landry Theater at the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, when a young boy of no more than 8 years old stuck his head in the door. The boy looked around the room and took a moment to observe the people sitting inside. Then he shrugged his shoulders, pivoted and walked away, presumably to go find his Mom.

I suspect a lot of you have the same mindset as that kid when it comes to the inner workings of the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. Perhaps momentarily curious, but ultimately you don’t really care.

I’m going to give you a peek inside anyway.

One of my great honors is serving on the 26-person selection committee for the Hall of Fame. It’s made up of sports journalists and broadcasters from around the state, along with four members of the Hall of Fame’s Board of Trustees. I’ve served on the committee for around 15 years now, and it’s still as cool and fun to be part of that process today as it was my first year.

We meet annually, each June, to assemble the ballot for the next year’s induction class. We take turns going around the room and nominating people, both for the 20-person primary ballot (active within the last 20 years) and for the 12-person veterans ballot (those who have been retired for more than 20 years). Then we debate and pare down the list. Some four hours later, when the dust settles and we all lick our wounds (kidding— kind of), we have a finished ballot, which we announce to the public.

Voting is done by members of the selection committee and voting members of the Texas Sports Hall of Fame (visit www.tshof.org for more info) over the course of the summer, and the induction class is announced sometime in September or October, after the Hall of Fame staff has received confirmations on who can attend the banquet the following spring.

Generally, the class consists of nine Texas sports legends.

And, man, are they ever legends. Have you ever scanned the list of people who have been enshrined by the Texas Sports Hall of Fame over the years? There’s enough big names to make Mount Rushmore jealous. Nolan Ryan, George Foreman, Ben Hogan, Mary Lou Retton, Roger Staubach, Earl Campbell, Willie Shoemaker, Hakeem Olajuwon … the list is endless.

But the quality of sports legend sitting in the waiting room is no less legendary.

Seriously, we could induct a class of 20 twice a year for the next hundred years and we’d never run out of worthy Hall of Famers. (We’d all be dead and gone, but you get the point.) That speaks to the quality of athlete, coach and athletic administrator you’ll find in the state of Texas.

Every year, even as a committee, we find ourselves saying, “How is so-or-so not already in the Hall of Fame?” The fact of the matter is that it takes time to earn induction, as you never really know how the voting is going to come out. (Other than the fact that it’s going to be football-heavy. It is Texas, after all, and that’s the way people vote.)

So, who are the most worthy people from each sport that we have yet to induct? Well, I’m glad I asked. That’s my project today, to offer up one humble committee servant’s opinions in answering that question.

Let me pause and allow a bit of how-the-sausage-is-made background first. We also have what I’d call a “holding tank” of people we’ve successfully voted in during past elections, but they’ve yet to earn induction because they haven’t committed to attending the banquet in Waco for one reason or another. That list includes such icons as Simone Biles, J.J. Watt, Jose Altuve, Dirk Nowitzki, Tim Duncan, Gregg Popovich, Adrian Beltre and others. Obviously those are some really big names. The Hall of Fame staff circles back with those people (or, more accurately, the people around those people) in hopes of adding them to the next induction class. Again, it’s a process that takes time.

For the purposes of this exercise, I won’t be including anyone in the “holding tank” as the most worthy non-inductee for their sport, only those who have yet to be voted in. One more bit of housecleaning: I’m breaking this column up into two parts, as a gift to both you readers and the Trib’s page designers.

Let’s get on with it.

Administration: R.C. Buford

Buford, 64, is the CEO of the San Antonio Spurs, and served as an executive for each of San Antonio’s five NBA championship runs. But Buford definitely earned his stripes. A former walk-on basketball player at Texas A&M, he logged 11 years as an assistant coach with the University of Kansas, the Spurs, the Clippers, and the University of Florida before rejoining the Spurs’ organization in 1994, when Popovich hired him as the team’s head scout.

He has twice been named NBA Executive of the Year.

Auto Racing: Kitty O’Neil

A native of Corpus Christi, O’Neil died in 2018 at the age of 72. Even before she started driving competitively, she lived life at high gear. She was a competitive diver who might have made the Olympic team if not for a bout with spinal meningitis, and also participated in water skiing, scuba diving, skydiving and hang gliding.

The adrenaline junkie in O’Neil found her true calling when she became a stuntwoman in the mid-1970s, working for TV shows like “The Bionic Woman” and “Wonder Woman.” In 1976, O’Neil set the land speed record for women in Oregon’s Alvord Desert, piloting a rocket car at a peak speed of 621 miles per hour. Her record stood until 2019.

Baseball: Cecil Cooper

I’ve stumped for Cooper for years, and not only because he hails from my hometown of Brenham. Cooper’s credentials speak for themselves. Cooper, 74, played 16 years in the Major Leagues, amassing a .298 career batting average with 2,192 hits. Coop was a five-time All-Star, a three-time Silver Slugger and a two-time Gold Glove honoree.

He twice led the American League in RBIs and would have won the batting title in 1980 if it had been a normal season and George Brett hadn’t flirted with .400 that year. (Cooper hit .352 to finish second to Brett’s .390 mark.) A member of the Milwaukee Brewers Hall of Honor, Cooper delivered the biggest hit in the history of that franchise with a game-winning single in Game 5 of the 1982 ALCS, sending the Brew Crew to their only World Series.

Basketball: 1966 Texas Western team

So, we’ve never inducted an entire team before, and we’d be breaking new ground if we ever did so. But when you’re talking about the most groundbreaking team in college sports history, yeah, I think they’re more than deserving.

The ’66 Miners of Texas Western (now UTEP) won the national championship, becoming the first team ever to do so with a starting lineup entirely made up of Black players. They broke barriers and paved the way for the game to evolve, and the Miners more than deserve their overdue recognition from the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. The only representative from the 1966 Miners who has been inducted is head coach Don Haskins, and obviously Bobby Joe Hill or David “Big Daddy” Lattin would be deserving inductees on their own accord. But I’m in favor of honoring this entire, world-changing team, much like the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame did in 2007.

Bowling: Norm Duke

Only two bowlers (Bill Lillard and Billy Welu) have ever gained TSHOF enshrinement in a sport often overlooked by the media, including me. As such, the quality of bowler who hasn’t made it in yet is rather strong, to the point where I had a tough time narrowing it down. (Put it this way: I would totally support Del Ballard Jr. and his wife Carolyn Dorin-Ballard, or Chris Barnes and his wife Lynda Barnes in future classes).

But let’s get Duke in first. A native of Mount Pleasant, Duke, 60, has won 40 titles on the PBA Tour, including seven major championships. He’s one of just three players in PBA history to win 40 or more events. And get this: He’s rolled a whopping 73 perfect 300 games in his career, which is still going on the PBA50 Tour.

Boxing: Ann Wolfe

I nominated Wolfe for induction this year, first learning of her story a couple of summers ago when my friend Cedric Golden of the Austin American-Statesman nominated her. And Wolfe did make this year’s ballot, so I’m hopeful that she’ll gain enshrinement. (Sorry, Ced, for beating you to the punch at this year’s meeting.)

Wolfe, 53, is regarded by many boxing pundits as one of the top women’s fighters in history. She grew up in Austin and after being homeless for a time as a young adult, she picked up boxing and flourished. Nicknamed “Brown Sugar,” Wolfe tallied a 24-1 record with one no-contest and 16 knockouts. She held world titles in three different weight classes simultaneously, and was inducted into the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame in 2015.

Also, of note: Wolfe played the Amazon warrior Artemis in the 2017 Wonder Woman film.

Football: Thomas Everett

OK, the honor of who’s next in the Hall of Fame waiting room for football could have easily gone to Patrick Mahomes or Johnny Manziel. Believe me, their day is coming. (Again, just for background: Mahomes will likely be inducted into the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame in 2025, and we don’t necessarily want to ask him to come to Waco twice in the span of a month for similar events.)

Everett, 59, is plenty worthy on his own. A native of Daingerfield, he of course dazzled as a defender at Baylor from 1983-86. He was a two-time Southwest Conference Defensive Player of the Year, a two-time All-American and the first winner of the Jim Thorpe Award as the nation’s top defensive back in 1986. Everett went on to play nine seasons in the NFL, making one Pro Bowl and winning a pair of Super Bowl titles with the Dallas Cowboys.

Golf: Lee Elder

Honestly, I’m not sure Elder’s name has even come up in all my years on the TSHOF committee, and that’s a shame. He spent the first 12 years of his life in Texas before moving to Los Angeles, so maybe the Texas connection is too tenuous for some voters. But he’s already a member of the Texas Golf Hall of Fame, so that’s more than good enough for me.

Elder is a PGA trailblazer, as the first Black player ever to play in the Masters. That alone would be enough to warrant induction, but Elder has more in the bag than just that distinction. He tallied 16 professional wins in his career, including four PGA Tour events, eight more on the Senior Tour, two events in Japan, one in Nigeria and another in Jamaica. Unfortunately, Elder died in 2021 at age 87, so his eventual induction will be awarded posthumously.

Gymnastics: Madison “Maddie” Kocian

Biles is the gymnastics GOAT, everyone knows that. As I said, the committee has already voted her in, and it’ll be a fun night sometime in the future when she makes her way to Waco for the ceremony.

I think gymnasts like Jonathan Horton and Kim Zmeskal would be fabulous additions to the Hall, but I’ve got to elevate Kocian to the top of the podium when it comes to those who haven’t been voted in. A member of the “Final Five” that led Team USA to a gold team medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics, Kocian, 26, also won a World Championship gold and an Olympic silver in the uneven bars. The native of Dallas helped UCLA win the 2018 NCAA title for good measure.

OK, that’s enough for now. Our next installment will look at eight more sports and the media category, so be sure to keep an eye out.