Funny how your perspective can change in 30 years.

When the story of Ken Stabler and Bob Padecky first surfaced in 1979 (read a detailed Sports Illustrated account here), I " like a lot of sports fans, I'm guessing " dismissed it as much ado about nothing.

My excuses: I was 14 years old at the time, and Stabler was one of my three favorite athletes, along with Reggie Jackson and Fred Biletnikoff. There's no way my hero would have planted a few grams of cocaine in a sportswriter's wheel well. And if he had? Screw 'em if they can't take a joke.

I sort of forgot about the episode until I moved from L.A. to Napa Valley in 1996 and noticed Padecky's mug in the pages of the Press Democrat. Why was that name so familiear to me? It finally registered that he was the reporter who had sparred with Stabler all those years ago.

In 2003, Padecky became my co-worker at the PD.

The fact that I have worked closely with Bob certainly colors my opinion of the Gulf Shores incident. But I'd like to think my view would have evolved since '79 even if I didn't know Padecky.

We'll probably never know whether Stabler was directly involved in the frame-up, though the circumstantial evidence is pretty damning. Maybe friends were acting on the QB's behalf, without his knowledge. In any case, this was no harmless prank. It was a heavy-handed attempt to prevent a reporter from doing his job, and it goes down as one of the most shameful events in the history of media-athlete relations.

It came to the forefront again this weekend, when Stabler acted as grand marshal for the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway. Bob, who covered the race, spoke to his former nemesis for the first time in years, and wrote a column on the experience.

If Stabler's image was tarnished by the fiasco, I would stop short of using it to deny him a place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. A contingent of sportswriters, led by S.I.'s Paul Zimmerman, has overtly voted against Stabler because of his suspected role in smearing Padecky. As bad as Stabler's behavior was at that time, I've never subscribed to the notion that off-field nastiness should influence on-field honors " even if that nastiness negatively impacts my fellow writers.

No, Stabler shouldn't be kept out of Canton because of the Padecky Episode. He should be kept out because, despite his brilliance between 1973 and 1976, and despite his flawless execution of the 2-minute drill, he threw 222 interceptions to 194 touchdown passes. Those simply aren't Hall of Fame numbers.

Anyway, I've still got Reggie Jax and Biletnikoff to fall back on.