Bill Belichick's Hall of Fame snub is a failure by football's keepers of history

Far be it from me to leap to the defense of Bill Belichick, but here we are.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame got it wrong this week. Its electors failed to vote Belichick, the most successful coach of his era and one of the great coaches of all time, into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. Whether this was politically motivated, a punishment of sorts, or something else is irrelevant. If Bill Belichick doesn’t go into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot, the process is broken.

And don’t tell me the first ballot doesn’t matter; it does. There have been tacit admissions from voters before that players (or other contributors) could be held out of the Hall during their first year of eligibility as a message to future nominees: do things the right way, or this honor will be denied to you. The most famous recent example is Terrell Owens, who was an incredible player but a pain in the butt, neck, or body part of your choice. He was made to wait a year while Marvin Harrison, an excellent and well-behaved wide receiver, went into the Hall of Fame. And later taunted Owens about it. You know, because he’s a class act and played the game the right way and definitely, definitely never shot anyone.

That’s not to say Bill Belichick was some perfect representation of doing things the right way, whatever that is. His list of scandals and accusations of underhanded tactics is long and well-established, and his current legacy-tainting stint at North Carolina certainly isn’t helping matters, even if that’s not under the jurisdiction of the PFHOF. But to suggest he’s somehow not worthy or should wait is asinine. What’s the point? What’s the message?

And more importantly, who’s sending it? Who is the invisible cabal to whom these players and coaches are supposed to appeal? The Hall of Fame vote is closed and secret. The ballots are never revealed, so we’ll never know exactly why Belichick didn’t get in. But just as importantly, future candidates can’t know who the secret football morality police are, but they know they can’t cross them. These people control your legacy, after all.

As a fan of football history, perhaps even as a low-level custodian of it, this is all very frustrating. Football is an old game (relatively speaking, in American terms, I suppose). Its history matters. Its history mattered to Belichick, a coach who was both a student of history and conscious of his place within it. It’s incumbent on the Hall of Fame to honor that history appropriately.

If the voting is going to continue this way, we need clear and understandable criteria for who is a Hall of Famer and why. Voters must show their work. Debates should be public. If the honor is this important, those who bestow (or withhold it) can’t hide behind a shield of privacy and anonymity.

And if we can’t fix the voting, we need better voters. We need better custodians of the game. The history of football can’t be left in the hands of petty, politically minded people who shape the game’s highest honor based on grievances and imagined moral high ground. We need people willing to tell open, comprehensive stories about the men they’re choosing to honor — or not to honor. 

That’s my ultimate call, here. If you’re a fan of football history, if you think it matters, there’s never been a better time to educate yourself and start educating others. Media is more democratized now than ever before, and access to history is simpler than it’s ever been. An affordable subscription to Newspapers.com will get you written accounts to nearly every football game ever played. YouTube can get you video, at the very last snippets, of many (or most) of them. Pro Football Reference, the greatest football site of them all, is free. It’s just there for the looking. 

We can’t let the story of the game be told by people willing to let grievances and grudges get in the way of what’s best for the game. If you’re willing to hold Belichick out, you’ve disqualified yourself from the job. And if we can’t trust the Hall of Fame to do its job, it’s up to us to do it for them.

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