Linebacker Patrick Willis of San Francisco earned NFL rookie of the month for, among other things, recording 69 tackles in December to go with two sacks, a forced fumble, a fumble recover and one pass defensed.

Wonderful. It's his third rookie of the month award and Willis was also named the defensive rookie of the year yesterday.

But would the NFL please stop using tackles as a way to bolster someone's candidacy or ability for all things defense. A tackle is in the eyes of the beholder, and it is not an official NFL stat, believe it or not. It is not official because objective observers are not the ones keeping them.

Coaches -- or sometimes team public-relations offices -- keep the tackle stats for their own players, and they are widely divergent how they do so from team to team. The Steelers, for instance, do not even list tackles as part of their record book. They have never had a player with more than 200 tackles in a season, as far as I know, even when they played a 4-3 and the middle linebacker (a.k.a. Hall of Famer Jack Lambert) had more opportunities for tackles.

Yet players around the league routinely pile up more than 200 tackles a season. One player who left the Steelers as a free agent after the 1993 season, linebacker Hardy Nickerson, started producing 200-tackle seasons annually in Tampa Bay and made Pro Bowls in part because of it.

People actually have added up the number of offensive plays for one team and the number of solo tackles awarded the other defense and the amount of plays run were far fewer.

Maybe Willis had 69 tackles for the month. He is listed as having 174 tackles this season by the 49ers, 135 of them unassisted or solo.

The Steelers' James Farrior, no rookie, had an outstanding season at inside linebacker. He led the team with 111 tackles, 72 of them solo.

Had the Steelers wanted, they could have given Farrior another 60 tackles and maybe he would have made All-Pro. Do that enough, and you can make Hall of Fame.

Tackles are something either the NFL should take over and have objective people keep them and count them as an official stat, or stop referring to them altogether because they are only as good as the creative men and women who award them.

James Farrior, by the way, got my vote for the All-Pro team as one of two inside linebackers.

Farrior turns 33 tomorrow, yet he turned in one of his best seasons with the Steelers.

He never leaves the field. He led them with 111 tackles, was second in sacks with a career-high six (inside linebackers do not have many opportunities for sacks in the 3-4), and was second on the team with 24 quarterback hurries/pressures.

He also had an interception, six passes defensed and two forced fumbles.

Farrior was the lone captain this season of a defense that finished No. 1 in the NFL in yards allowed.

It's a good thing for football players and their coaches that most of the same people who vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame do not cast ballots for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. No one might ever get in.

I vote in both. This year, I cast a ballot in baseball for Mark McGwire. Yes, I know he is very unpopular right now because he is suspected of taking something that helped him hit home runs. That is why he came nowhere near being selected in his first year on the ballot a year ago.

Thing is, it never was proven that McGwire took steroids or human growth hormone, nor was it against baseball rules at the time to do so. So why are so many voters so sanctimonious?

There are many in the Pro Football Hall of Fame suspected of taking steroids, or doing other drugs. Some admitted to it, and some were punished. The NFL moves on; it dishes out the punishment and it's accepted and the game and the player's career (usually) continues.

Baseball has never been as pure a sport as those romantics who want to believe it is. It was rife with alcohol, amphetamines, then with cocaine, long before the steroids issue popped up. Punish those who are caught and move on.

Even Pete Rose would be in baseball's Hall had he never managed a game. He would have been swept into Cooperstown on the first ballot, five years after his retirement. Then, he could have managed the Reds and bet all he wanted on games and they never could take that Hall of Fame ring away from him.