Can’t remember if it was Mike, Whitlock, or both, but they also talked about the players of the year selections. So they were consistent.

And no, the Pro Bowl is not selected by the people I’m talking about. The Pro Bowl is selected by a combination of active players and fans. It’s the inclusion of fans that results in ridiculous people being named to the Pro Bowl. Basically, if you get a lot of press, you’ll make the Pro Bowl. Or if you’ve made it for several years, you’ll continue to make it long past your prime. It’s a popularity contest. In years when the Pro Bowl was voted solely by players, those selected more accurately reflected the best at their positions. Now we’ve extended this fan-vote stupidity to the Super Bowl MVP

Whitlock and I aren’t suggesting that active players have a voice in selecting the Hall of Fame. We’re talking about people who know how to evaluate talent. I don’t care for the man, but Bill Polian would be a much better judge of players deserving Hall of Fame recognition than Len Pasquarelli. Certainly brilliant longtime player personnel people like Ozzie Newsome and Kevin Colbert understand how to objectively evaluate talent. I have no objection to having some sportswriters in the mix, but they need to meet some fundamental criteria to suggest their heads aren’t up their backsides.

Of course, people will continue to b*tch about the results. That doesn’t matter … unless their complaints are justified.

Yes, but two of those seven were senior candidates. They didn’t keep Roaf out, he wasn’t competing against them.

The AP hands out end of the year awards as well as naming All Pro and All Decade teams. If you’re going to vetch about the HOF vote, at least be consistent.

I don’t see why you think the process would any less flawed if coaches and players were involved. These are the same people that put Steven Jackson in the Pro Bowl this year.

Whitless doesn’t make a lot of sense. He knows nothing about the process and doesn’t pretend to. Instead he insists the HOF voters don’t know anything about football when they were the ones who named Roaf to his precious All-Decade team. Like I said, be consistent.

By all means, add a few coaches and players to the HOF committee. Just don’t expect anyone to stop btching about the results.

Guess you didn’t notice that seven guys went in this year. Why should the HoF selection be made by people who never played the game, never drafted a player, never coached a winning team? And why has selection been limited to five players a year when they could increase to seven if they wanted? The issue shouldn’t be how many but how deserving. If a guy deserves to be enshrined, he should be enshrined without having to play a numbers game … and certainly not a politics game. Whitlock made a lot of sense, which you might recognize if you were more focsed on the game and less on making silly, nonsubstantive comments about “Whitless.”

How do you change the power structure? That’s simple. The NFL–remember them?–adds some former coaches and execs to the voting pool. That would change the balance of power immediately.

Yes, the HOF voting process is not perfect. Yes, Roaf should be in and will be shortly. But I had no problem with the guys they did put in.

As opposed to Whitless’ childish rant, I do appreciate HOF voters have a very difficult job to do. Only five guys in a year is tough.

YESSSS!!! Yes yes yes Brilliant discussion!! Most of the time, Jason Whitlock is way too bright for the room. I’m not a Deion Sanders fan–couldn’t stand him when he played. But Whitlock’s comments about Sanders place in the Hall, especially about Franco, were dead on the money.

It’s absurd to let the Max Mercys of sport (a reference to the Duvall character in The Natural) make the decisions on who goes into the Hall of Fame when it’s evident that they’re making their decisions based on something other than performance criteria. I’m not a fantasy football person and agree with Whitlock’s videogame assessment. To me, the issue is the impact the player had when he played. That the measure of whether he belongs in the Hall.

BTW, nice look.

FYI, L.C. Greenwood belongs in the Hall but did not make it in three years. Based on his domination at the safety position while he played and the stats he held when he retired, Donnie Shell belongs in the Hall but was not elected within three years.

Certainly six-time All Pro first-teamer Dermontti Dawson, who dominated the center position throughout his career, belongs in the hall but has only made the final 10 for the past two years. Games are won and lost in the trenches but linemen are frequently ignored in HoF voting while more publicized players are enshrined year after year. After three years does that mean we just scratch them from the list??

And those are just the Steelers. Many players from other teams–Willie Roaf, Jerry Kramer, Ray Guy, etc., who made the game what it is deserve to be in the Hall.

Until you mature or learn something about the game, please hush.

It’s not as bad as the MLB HOF voting, which is a freaking joke that has been exhaustively covered elsewhere, but it’s certainly flawed.

Non-player nominations need to be handled separately from player nominations, like the veterans committee does now with its two choices who are sent to the main group on an up-or-down basis. Doing so means that deserving non-players like Don “Air” Coryell will eventually get recognized because their enshrinement won’t give a deserving player the short-shrift.

The cap on the number of players considered either needs to be raised or the entire thing changed to a pro-bowl style ballot in which you choose people by position. The current five-player cap makes it hard for someone at a position like offensive lineman or kicker / punter to get enshrined because everyone wants to put the skill position players in since they rack up big numbers.

There are other changes that need to be made, but these are a start.

Disclosure – I’m a Saints fan and feel Willie Roaf got screwed as well, but I haven’t been big on the HOF voting for a while now because of the tendency for big-name players with mediocre stats like Joe Namath to make it in over deserving players with better stats who had the misfortune to play in smaller markets.