Eight Ways to Fix Pro Football's Broken Hall of Fame Voting Process
📖 Full Retelling
Bill Belichick belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and there isn’t a good counterargument to that. He would be in the Hall already if the selection process wasn’t completely broken. The people who run the Hall have promised to fix it, but the solutions they recently leaked are likely to make it even worse. They need a complete overhaul, a bigger electorate and more transparency — in essence, a completely new approach to selecting Hall of Famers. Here are eight steps they can take to ensure the greatest of the greats all get in accordingly. 1. Add more voters This is the simplest and most common sense fix the Hall could make. The more voters they use, the more accurate the result will be. They currently have only 50 voters — mostly media members, including one representing every NFL city (two from cities with two teams). In small groups, biases can become a very big factor. Think of it this way: If you polled 500 media members and asked if Bill Belichick belonged in the Hall, he’d probably get 98% of the vote, at least. If there are 11 people who voted "No", that wouldn’t matter. But if those 11 people are in a group of 50, suddenly Belichick is out. A big group, like the way baseball selects its Hall of Famers, eliminates the fringe factor. It eliminates power from small groups that might hold a grudge, have a geographical bias, or other nonsensical issues. Many years ago, a voter told me he voted against players from Dallas because "too many Cowboys are in already." Another once told me he voted against Giants and Jets because "New York players are always over-hyped." Stupidity like that becomes minimized by large numbers. So drop the dumb, outdated geographic requirements and give a vote to every member of the media who has been in the Pro Football Writers of America and actively covering games for at least 10 years. Include broadcasters (both TV and radio) and even some who handle media for NFL teams, since the lines are blurred anyway these days. Even in a
📄 Original Source Content
Bill Belichick belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and there isn’t a good counterargument to that. He would be in the Hall already if the selection process wasn’t completely broken. The people who run the Hall have promised to fix it, but the solutions they recently leaked are likely to make it even worse. They need a complete overhaul, a bigger electorate and more transparency — in essence, a completely new approach to selecting Hall of Famers. Here are eight steps they can take to ensure the greatest of the greats all get in accordingly. 1. Add more voters This is the simplest and most common sense fix the Hall could make. The more voters they use, the more accurate the result will be. They currently have only 50 voters — mostly media members, including one representing every NFL city (two from cities with two teams). In small groups, biases can become a very big factor. Think of it this way: If you polled 500 media members and asked if Bill Belichick belonged in the Hall, he’d probably get 98% of the vote, at least. If there are 11 people who voted "No", that wouldn’t matter. But if those 11 people are in a group of 50, suddenly Belichick is out. A big group, like the way baseball selects its Hall of Famers, eliminates the fringe factor. It eliminates power from small groups that might hold a grudge, have a geographical bias, or other nonsensical issues. Many years ago, a voter told me he voted against players from Dallas because "too many Cowboys are in already." Another once told me he voted against Giants and Jets because "New York players are always over-hyped." Stupidity like that becomes minimized by large numbers. So drop the dumb, outdated geographic requirements and give a vote to every member of the media who has been in the Pro Football Writers of America and actively covering games for at least 10 years. Include broadcasters (both TV and radio) and even some who handle media for NFL teams, since the lines are blurred anyway these days. Even in a