After Bill Belichick’s snub, has the Pro Football Hall of Fame been tarnished? – The Athletic

SAN FRANCISCO — They called it “ignorant,” “insane,” “disappointing,” “disrespectful,” “embarrassing,” “f’ing embarrassing,” the “most outrageous robbery in NFL history” and “just WRONG,” in all caps.

Former receiver Keyshawn Johnson ranted while driving. Former linebacker Willie McGinest ranted, profanely, in his parked car. Hall of Famer Terrell Owens described it as “just plain dumb,” and future Hall of Famer JJ Watt railed that it’s “the stupidest thing” he’s ever seen.

“Have you ever seen Twitter come together about anything?” Watt said incredulously while on “The Pat McAfee Show” last week.

When word got out that Bill Belichick — the eight-time Super Bowl winner and second-winningest coach in NFL history — was not voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, the criticism came from every corner. Current players, former players, Hall of Famers, Hall of Fame voters, former Hall of Fame voters, media, fans and even President Donald Trump — who declared it “ridiculous” and suggested the vote be overturned — railed against the Hall for the egregious blunder. The omission of Patriots owner Robert Kraft fueled more outrage.

“I was like everyone else when that went down,” Hall of Fame quarterback and current NFL Network analyst Kurt Warner told The Athletic. “You’re fully surprised, but then I think the next part of it is asking the question why — why did this happen?”

Selecting a Hall of Fame class is inherently subjective and the results may always draw some backlash. But never has the Hall faced this level of ire. The galvanizing consensus from outsiders about Belichick’s candidacy has led some to question the Hall’s voting process, its individual voters and even its prestige.

Could the Belichick Blunder tarnish Canton’s hallowed halls?

“The Hall, for the moment, is wounded,” said Peter King, the former NFL columnist who was on the Hall of Fame’s selection committee for 32 years before retiring in 2024. “What this tells me is that people love the Hall of Fame, they love their heroes and they want this to be done right.”

The only criteria for candidates to be elected to the Hall of Fame are based on their “achievements and contributions (positive or negative) as a Player, a Coach or a Contributor in professional football in the United States of America.”

Off-the-field or away-from-the-game issues are not to be considered by voters or included in their presentations or discussions about the nominees.

It’s as basic as it gets: Pick the candidates who achieved the most. Yet, the Hall’s voting process is complicated.

Multiple revisions to its bylaws in recent years have attempted to make election more exclusive while also giving more opportunity to the backlog of seniors, or players whose careers ended at least 25 years ago.

Think back to 2022, when some Hall of Famers criticized it for allowing in too many candidates.

“The Hall of Fame ain’t the Hall of Fame no more,” Deion Sanders, a 2011 inductee, said that year. “I love it. I respect it. I admire it. I think all the guys who were inducted definitely are deserving. But there needs to be a different color jacket. My jacket needs to be a different color. … My head doesn’t belong with some of these other heads that are in the Hall of Fame. … This thing is becoming a free-for-all now, man. … If you play good — no. No. It ain’t good. It’s people that change the game. That’s what the Hall of Fame is.”

Sanders, of course, was among the many who criticized the Hall when Belichick was omitted.

The Hall divides candidates into four categories: modern-era players, coaches, contributors — defined as those who “made outstanding contributions to professional football in capacities other than playing or coaching” — and seniors.

Starting with the 2025 class, coaches and contributors have been separated into distinct categories, with blue-ribbon committees selecting one finalist from each. Another blue-ribbon committee selects three finalists among the pool of seniors, which was the result of another bylaw change that went into effect in 2023. Previously, the Hall allowed for only one senior finalist.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame selection process (John Bradford / The Athletic)

Those five are put before the Hall’s 50-person selection committee during its annual meeting, but instead of getting simple up or down votes, voters must pick three of five candidates, who have to to receive 80 percent approval to get elected. If no finalist meets that bar, the single finalist with the most votes is elected.

That means, the five finalists for the senior, coach and contributors categories are explicitly competing against each other.

“What I think happened is that the sentiment for senior candidates hurt the coach and contributor,” said USA Today’s Jarrett Bell, a long-time selection committee member. “Last year, we didn’t get a coach or contributor in, either.”

Eric Allen was one of four 2025 inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. (Nick Cammett / Getty Images)

Sterling Sharpe was the lone senior inductee in 2025, alongside three modern-era players: Eric Allen, Jared Allen and Antonio Gates. (There are 15 modern-era finalists, with three to five of those candidates earning induction.)

The previous four classes had eight, eight, nine and seven members, respectively.

“It was well-intentioned, but it just doesn’t work because of the mechanics of the process,” King said. “They were trying to make it harder, and what they did is they made it fairly impossible.”

Tony Dungy, the Hall of Fame coach turned broadcaster, refused to speculate on the outcome of this year’s vote. He is a voter and voters are not informed of the results, but he hasn’t held back his displeasure with the process.

“We’ve got so many people who are worthy of being in the Hall of Fame,” he said while thinking of last year’s four-member class. “And if we don’t put a full class in, to me, that’s wrong.”

Belichick’s role in Spygate, the 2007 scandal in which the Patriots were penalized for videotaping New York Jets coaches’ signals, could have factored into voters’ decision-making, much like steroids or betting have cost baseball players, although the extent any voters may have weighed that isn’t clear.

“All right, just expunge what he did before Spygate,” NBC Sports’ Charean Williams, an at-large Hall of Fame voter, argued. “Just take that out. … He still won three Super Bowls. He still won 190 games, which is more than 22 of the coaches in the Hall of Fame have in their careers.”

But any restriction on class size or the number of certain types of candidates will always force voters to consider extenuating factors and set personal priorities, whether it’s a belief that players are more deserving than coaches, that a 10-year finalist is more deserving than a first-timer, or that entering on the first ballot is more special than doing so on the second or third.

“I don’t think there should be a stipulation of, ‘Oh, it can only be one coach or it can be only one contributor,’” Warner said. “… If we say, OK, we’re going to have five modern-day guys and three others, let it be all the others. Open it up for qualified people to get into the Hall of Fame that aren’t in the modern-day class.”

Are Ken Anderson, Roger Craig and L.C. Greenwood, this year’s senior finalists, more worthy than Belichick or Kraft?

Not according to Vahe Gregorian, the Kansas City Star columnist who nonetheless voted in favor of the three seniors over Belichick and Kraft.

“I felt duty-bound to vote for the richly deserving seniors, who most likely won’t ever have a hearing again as more senior candidates enter the pool and fresh cases get made for others,” he wrote. “Meanwhile, Belichick is inevitable soon … as he should be.”

Neither Bill Belichick nor Robert Kraft is expected to be inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2026. (Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)

King admitted he once was guilty of making the same emotional decision. In 2020, he didn’t vote for Troy Polamalu, believing he was a shoo-in for the Hall and that others needed his vote more.

“I gave it to Tony Boselli because I felt like Boselli was the closest thing to Anthony Munoz since Munoz, and he wasn’t getting any traction because of a short career,” King explained. “But that’s wrong. You can’t play God. You’ve got to vote for the people who you feel are best.”

During the selection committee’s annual meeting to discuss the merits of the 20 finalists, voters who represent the market for each candidate are tasked with presenting their case. One presenter may be more well liked than others. One presentation could be more memorable than others.

“Regardless of the process, Bill Belichick is a no-brainer, first-ballot Hall of Famer,” Williams said. “He’s a shoo-in, right? … I mean, it just seems like common sense that the voters are gonna do the right thing and put in Bill Belichick, and it didn’t happen for whatever reason.”

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said he believes Belichick and Kraft are worthy candidates for the Hall and will be elected eventually.

The league, Goodell said, had no role in their omission this year.

And that’s true; neither he nor the 25 other board of directors for the Hall of Fame vote on the candidates. But the board does approve the selection of committee members and any bylaw changes.

Williams, King and Bell all believe additional changes are necessary after the Belichick snub.

“I’d kind of like to go back to having the coaches and the contributors to contend against themselves and for the vote to really be a yes or no once we get them to the final stage,” Bell said.

Added Williams: “I think this is an unintended consequence of the bylaw changes from two years ago, and I do think the rules will change. I think the voting process will change. I think it has to.”

But how it could change, without complicating the process further or creating more wounds to the Hall, is unclear.

“People are angry and well, they should be angry,” King said. “But I don’t believe that people are going to lose some love of the game or the Hall of Fame because Bill Belichick and Mike Ditka and Bill Walsh did not go into the Hall of Fame in their first years eligible. It is wrong, but life goes on.”