Mar 21, 2015 5 min read

Good for Dale Hansen.

He’s a rarity in American sports media for a couple of reasons: His age and his guts. Hansen is 66 and looks it, and he is still working as a weeknight sports anchor in a major TV market.

There aren’t a lot of old, chubby, bald people doing sports on local TV newscasts these days, especially in top 10 markets. Sportscasters with the guts (not to mention permission) to say the things Hansen said about his local NFL team are more rare.

Hansen works for WFAA-TV in Dallas. Here’s a little of what he had to say about Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett on his Wednesday sportscast: “He’s one of two things. He’s either a fraud and hypocrite when he talks about having the right type of guys, ‘character guys’ on his team … or he really has no say and he’s simply the puppet so many of you think he is.”

And here’s what he had to say about the Cowboys as an organization, “Just when I begin to think the Cowboys can’t sink any lower – they can’t fall from grace any more than they have – they find another shovel and dig a few feet deeper.”

What got Hansen so fired up?

The Cowboys signed Greg Hardy to a contract that will pay him somewhere between $8 and $13 million next season.

You remember Hardy. He’s the Carolina Panthers All-Pro pass rusher who was convicted of beating, choking and threatening to kill his girlfriend. But that was a bench trial – meaning it was a judge who heard the testimony and found him guilty. Hardy, under North Carolina law, appealed the conviction and asked for a jury trial, though the judge suspended his 60-day jail sentence and put him on 18 months probation – a slap on the wrist if there ever was one.

His girlfriend, probably a few million dollars richer, didn’t show up for the trial and the charges were dropped.

Hardy will probably be suspended for at least a few games by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who saw no reason to suspend him after his conviction. The famous Ray Rice video drew a little too much attention to the NFL’s domestic violence problem and Goodell, whom Hansen referred to as “the NFL’s Barney Fife,” put Hardy on the exempt list about 15 minutes after that video went viral. That meant he couldn’t play, but he would still get his $13 million salary from the Panthers.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones backed Fife, sorry, Goodell, when he suspended Ray Rice. He said “(Domestic abuse) is intolerable and will be adjudicated accordingly.”

It becomes a lot more tolerable when your team’s biggest need is a good pass rusher.

Wonder how Jones would feel if a video of Hardy with his hands on his girlfriend’s throat suddenly showed up.

Maybe you have to be 66 with a successful TV career behind you to have the guts to say this on a local TV newscast in an NFL city, but you can be sure that it wouldn’t happen in very many NFL cities:

“The irony in this signing? Cowboys vice president Charlotte Jones Anderson (the owner’s daughter) is on the NFL’s personal conduct policy committee. It must be quite a committee, and quite a policy. And apparently if Charlotte were ever beaten by a man, the esteemed owner would be OK with that man on his team, if he could play.”

Hansen’s reaction was rare and refreshing.

But not nearly as refreshing and rare as it would have been if no NFL team offered Hardy a job.

• What’s wrong with the Penguins? Going into Saturday night’s game in Phoenix, they lost four in a row and scored two goals in those four games. The team is averaging about a point less per game than Sidney Crosby averaged for most of his career. They need to, you know, start scoring more goals.

They’ve been playing without two of their three best goal scorers, Evgeni Malkin and Patrick Hornqvist. That is not an excuse. That is a fact. The Penguins looked like one of the best teams in the league when Crosby, Malkin and Hornqvist were healthy and playing together.

This season has always been about where the Penguins are on June 1. If they’re still playing, no one will remember or care about a bad stretch in March.

Big if. I know.

Just remember how much you cared about how they ran away with the Metropolitan Division last season in late May of last year.

It’s not an oversimplification to say the best thing the Penguins can do between now and the playoffs is get and stay healthy.

• The stupidity factor in the NHL is approaching pre-2004 lockout levels. Referees are ignoring interference and holding when it happens right in front of them. But the NHL is going to make up for that by putting a team in Las Vegas. Because that other team in the desert, the Coyotes, has done so well. It’s a good thing hockey is such a great sport.

• If you like hockey, run, don’t walk to see the documentary “Red Army” at a theater near you. Even if you don’t like hockey, go. It’s a great history lesson and just tremendous film making.

• My money’s on Chris Borland becoming the NFL’s next Incredibly Shrinking Man.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter