Our friend Peter King put it best.
“Holy fuck! Oh fuck!”
That was King’s response to the news, via Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham of ESPN.com, that former Browns and Patriots coach Bill Belichick did not qualify for the Pro Football Hall of Fame on his first try.
It’s stunning. F-bomb stunning. Double-F-bomb stunning. Belichick ranks second on the all-time wins list. He won six Super Bowls as coach of the Patriots, and two more as the defensive coordinator of the New York Giants. He’s widely regarded as one of the greatest coaches of all time, in any sport.
Belichick’s opponents apparently hung their hats on multiple cheating scandals involving the Patriots. “The only explanation [for the outcome] was the cheating stuff,” an unnamed Hall of Fame voter told ESPN.com. “It really bothered some of the guys.”
Or it was a convenient excuse to get back at someone they just don’t like.
Of the three Patriots cheating scandals, only one stuck to Belichick: Spygate I. Spygate II was never proven, and #Deflategate (a flawed, results-driven investigation with evidence of cheating that was inconclusive at best) was a Tom Brady scandal. Belichick, in a memorable press conference that included a reference to Mona Lisa Vito, distanced himself from the question of whether someone was taking the air out of footballs before kickoff.
Even then, Belichick won three Super Bowls after #Deflategate happened, with no doubt that the footballs had enough air in them at all times.
I said it months ago and I’ll say it again now. The failure to put Belichick in on the first try strips the Hall of Fame and its voting process of all legitimacy and credibility. It’s joke that he didn’t make it. Anyone who voted against his enshrinement should be stripped of the privilege, immediately.
That said, whoever it was that couldn’t set aside Belichick being a jerk to them or who have sneered at how he has conducted himself over the past year or got their way — proving yet again that no amount of power gets abused like hardly any at all.
So congratulations to those who didn’t want him in. You got your pound of flesh. At the expense of the integrity of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
