With the news Tuesday that Tony Gonzalez would appear next year on The NFL Today, the flipside of that addition is that Dan Marino and Shannon Sharpe will not be returning to the show.
That might stir up some fantasies from Dolphins fans that perhaps the Miami organization -- where, of course, Marino starred as quarterback in the 1980s and '90s -- would bring home its old fan favorite in some kind of front office leadership role.
Much in the same way John Elway is the main front-office face for the Broncos organization.
Yet, Marino and Elway are not a fair comparison.
As the Miami Herald points out, Marino has no experience in running a team or dealing with player personnel. Elway has shown a knack for making the right moves and landing the right players -- after all, his team just made the Super Bowl -- but Marino has been a TV talking head for the past several years.
Are his talent evaluating skills good enough for him to make a positive impact? Right now, there's no way to know.
That's not to say that Marino couldn't learn, but it's unlikely he could just waltz into the organization and make wholesale changes right away that would turn the team into a Super Bowl contender.
Writes the Herald: "So will the Dolphins chase Marino? As has been reported here, the club had informal conversations with Marino two years ago about joining the team in some capacity. Marino never closed the door. And neither did the Dolphins. But neither did either party pursue the matter further."
Marino worked in the Dolphins front office briefly in 2004, but ultimately, he decided he wanted to go back into the TV game. Now that's no longer the case, perhaps owner Stephen Ross will decide that hiring Marino would bring some goodwill to an organization that desperately needs it.
