Yesterday, the NFL's Hall of Fame class of 2011 was revealed. For Marshall Faulk, Deion Sanders, and Ed Sabol for what he did for the league with NFL Films, these honors are well deserved, and in Sabol's case long overdue. I take nothing away from these three in the following rant...
Curtis Martin not getting in on the 1st ballot was a travesty. This is officially the end of the Hall of Fame as a legit, upstanding vote. Its new name, borrowed from Steve Czaban: The Hall of Unaccountable, Biased Sportswriters.
Shannon Sharpe was going to get in eventually, but over Curtis? No way. Jerome Bettis not making it was also proof that these voters are idiots.
Richard Dent was one part of a great defense (for a short period of time). Big deal. You don't vote for people because they've been waiting a long time, you vote for the best. And those other two old jabronis who made it, I am not even going to bother to look up their Wikipedia pages because they are irrelevant.
Funny side note: knowing the kind of person Curtis Martin is, I realize I am way more angry over this than Curtis himself, who by all accounts is ridiculously kind and humble. So this snub was in no way a punishment to Curtis Martin himself. But it is a slap in the face to anyone who watched Martin play...or anyone who understands football, really.
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3 comments:
Peter King tried to defend the writer selections in his MMQB column, and openly thought to include players and owners would welcome bias into the selection process. Because, ya' know ... writers aren't biased. And yeah, I'm all for Sabol, but isn't it more important that a guy who played football rather awesomely get in ahead of a guy who filmed football rather awesomely?
Also, no matter the league/Fame Hall, I have never understood the "we'll vote for him later" methodology. Why is there criteria in place to even allow such a thing (in the NFL, it's only 5 per year)? It's so freakin' stupid. If someone belongs, vote for him.
Maybe regarding the Curtis Martin snub, the voters enacted Woody Paige quotient of "not feeling it."
Hall of Shame is an apt moniker for that unaccountable pack of idiots whose voting process makes the election of a pope look like a state primary.
Honestly... as someone who was only aware of Curtis Martin because of your adorable man-crush, I really had no idea how statistically good he was until I just looked it up. Wow. He probably did deserve a first-ballot entry to the HoF.
That said, the part of your post I take objection to is that this is the moment the Hall of Fame became irrelevant. In reality, it's been irrelevant for quite some time.
But that's how it goes... the longer the NFL exists, the less the Hall of Fame means. Regardless of percentages, once you reach a certain number of inductees, it just doesn't matter any more. There are tons of people in the Hall of Fame that I've never heard of. For the Hall of Fame to really maintain relevance throughout the years, entrance requirements would have to be much, much stricter.
But really, that wouldn't work either. Because it would still be based on a group of sports fans voting on it. So it's never going to be an objective, meaningful status. Just take it for what it is, or ignore it.
And that applies to every Hall of Fame, not just football's. I mean, can we really take the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame seriously after they inducted ABBA and the Talking Heads?
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