The Official 2026 Public Vote

Your Vote Shapes the Hall

Explore the official candidates and cast your votes for the individuals you believe deserve a place in the United States Athletics Hall of Fame.

Gil Brandt

  • Contest: The US Athletic Hall of Fame - Contributors 2026
  • Embed from Getty Images
  • Sport(s): Football
  • Statistics & Accolades: 2 Super Bowls (Vi & XII)
    Member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame
    Member of the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor
  • A scout for the Los Angeles Rams and then the San Francisco 49ers in the 1950s, Gil Brandt, was hired as the head scout for the Dallas Cowboys before they first took the field in 1960. Brandt was good at it that he orchestrated the selection of nine players who would enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

    Brandt’s success had nothing to do with luck, and it was far more than preparation; it was about innovation. Brandt was the first to use computers, and he used it to help with his new scouting and evaluating system. Brandt was such an outside of the box thinker that he scouted athletes from other sports that he thought had the makeup to be a professional football player. He adopted psychology tests to identify mental and personality fits for the Cowboys, and he aggressively looked at undrafted players and small colleges. Brandt was also integral in the creation of the NFL scouting combine.

    What Brandt developed became the blueprint by which all NFL teams all use. It can be argued that there is not a more innovative talent evaluator in any sport than Brandt.

    We are proud to nominate Gil Brandt for the United States Athletic Hall of Fame.
Previous Next
Back to List
© 2026 The United States Athletics Hall of Fame. All Rights Reserved.

Select athlete photographs are sourced from Wikimedia Commons and used under applicable Creative Commons licenses or public-domain terms. Images may have been cropped, color-adjusted or graphically modified by USAHOF. All applicable rights remain with their respective creators. Additional site imagery may include original digital artwork created for USAHOF.