DALLAS (AP) — Gil Brandt, overshadowed by coach Tom Landry and general manager Tex Schramm as part of the trio that built the Dallas Cowboys into “America’s Team” in the 1970s, has died. He was 91.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame said Brandt died Thursday morning. No cause of death was given, but Brandt had been in declining health in recent years.
Brandt was the player personnel director alongside the stoic, fedora-wearing Landry and media-savvy Schramm, but had to wait almost 30 years longer to get into the Hall of Fame.
AP Photo/Ron Jenkins
By the time Brandt was enshrined as a contributor, it was as much for his ability to remain involved in the NFL by adapting to the social media age as for the innovation the Cowboys brought to the draft process with computers in the early 1960s.
“You can’t tell the story about the success of the Dallas Cowboys and their two-decade run of winning seasons from the mid-1960s to mid-1980s without mentioning Gil Brandt,” Hall…