With apologies to my boss, Troy Aikman sounded like the "voice of reason" today when meeting with the media. I love listening to him during games or interview situations, because everything he says is well thought-out. That's not very common in the sports world. If you get a chance, watch Aikman's full interview here.

I'm working on a story for 10:00 tonight, and the focus will be on Aikman's comments about Roy Williams and Tony Romo. I try to make sure when I'm doing stories to use sound bites in their proper context; what I don't want to do is what athletes accuse us in the media of doing -- taking their comments out of context. For example, Aikman said that the Williams trade could be one of the biggest busts in NFL history, if he's not the player the Cowboys thought they were getting. Although that's the "bombshell" sound bite, Aikman spent a good couple minutes making this point. In fact, here's the transcript (please forgive any typos):

I don't know that you can give up what the Cowboys gave up for somebody and not make that a sure bet. This is like drafting a #1 receiver out of the college draft and then saying, we think he's got all the skills to be a great player for us, he's been in the NFL, he's caught balls in the NFL. They have a lot of tape on him, they've had the ability to talk to a lot of people who have coached him, who have coached against him, who have played against him, played with him. Uh, I think this would be, if Roy Williams doesn't turn out to be the player that they thought he would be when they made the trade, I think this would be one of the biggest busts in the history of the league.

(A couple questions later, he said this): When you have the chance, when you have the chance to evaluate a player to the degree that the Cowboys were able to, and then to give up what you gave up, if he's not a #1 receiver and not a highly productive player for this team, that's a huge flaw within their scouting department

Anyway, like I said, it's all good stuff. If you get a chance, click on the link above and listen to the whole interview; it's about 15 minutes long.

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