Kevin Mawae will be in his Minneapolis hotel room Saturday afternoon, waiting for a phone call or a knock at the door. A knock means football immortality; a phone call means at least another year of hoping and dreaming.
This is the election-day drill for Pro Football Hall of Fame finalists.
"The worst part of the whole thing is sitting around the hotel, waiting," Mawae told ESPN on Thursday night.
Mawae, who endured the agony of the wait last year as a finalist, deserves a knock. He was the league's most dominant center during his playing career (1994-2009), a freakish athlete who revolutionized the position.