Bill Belichick belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame — there’s no defensible reason he shouldn’t already be enshrined, if the selection process were working as it should. The Hall’s leadership has vowed to reform things, but their leaked fixes risk making matters worse. What the Hall needs is a thorough revamp: more voters, greater transparency, and a fundamentally different selection method.
1. Add more voters
The quickest, most obvious improvement is to expand the voting pool. With just 50 voters today — mostly media members, one per NFL city (two in cities with two teams) — small-group biases carry too much weight. In a larger electorate, outlier opinions matter far less. For example, if 500 informed media members were polled about Belichick, he’d likely receive overwhelmingly positive support; an 11-person minority can’t derail that consensus the way it can in a 50-person group. Remove the old geographic restrictions and give ballots to all media members affiliated with the Pro Football Writers of America who have at least a decade of active coverage, including TV and radio broadcasters and some team beat reporters. Even in a shrinking media environment, that would create a more experienced, substantial voting body.
2. Include Hall of Famers and other NFL insiders
Randy Moss suggested that only players and coaches should vote, which is a bad idea — but he’s right that former players, coaches and executives bring important perspectives. Add every living Hall of Famer to the ballot pool, plus selected historians, former coaches and general managers, and players who have reached 10 years in the league after they’re eligible. A broader mix of voices will improve the process.
3. Expand each year’s class
Voters often complain that ballots are overcrowded: many of the 15 finalists are clearly deserving, yet only a limited number can be elected because of current caps. Break the logjam by expanding annual classes — even temporarily. The Hall has done this before with the 2020 “100th Anniversary Class” of 20 inductees. A practical plan would be to raise the modern-player spots to 10 per year and reserve one coach, one contributor, and one senior inductee annually (details below), while trimming ceremony time or splitting events to keep logistics manageable.
4. Let voters say yes or no on every candidate
The multi-stage elimination process — shrinking a field from ~120 to 50, to 25, to 15, etc. — creates unnecessary position battles and strategic voting. Instead, give each voter a ballot with the full slate of candidates and require a simple yes/no on each name. Elect those who reach the standard threshold (75%) or, if more than the set limit surpass that percentage, use a cap similar to baseball’s model. The key question for every voter should simply be: “Is this person a Hall of Famer?”
5. End the presentation requirement and abolish the long selection meeting
The current format in which a media representative “presents” candidates and the committee debates them for eight to nine hours is counterproductive and invites conflicts of interest and backroom trading (“you vote for mine, I’ll vote for yours”). Voters should do their homework independently and decide on their ballots without being swayed by polished presentations. Eliminating the marathon meeting reduces opportunities for deal-making and campaigning among voters; if someone needs an hour to decide about a clear-cut case like Belichick, they probably shouldn’t be voting.
6. Use separate ballots for contributors, coaches, and seniors
Non-player categories should be handled independently. Preferably, the contributor category should honor true “builders” who transformed the league rather than just wealthy owners or commissioners. Each year a small committee would nominate 5–10 candidates in these non-player categories, and the top vote-getter (meeting the 75% threshold) would be inducted. Do the same for coaches and senior candidates, reserving one spot per class for each category and keeping these selections separate from modern-player slots. This avoids forcing voters to compare vastly different types of candidates against one another.
7. Lengthen the waiting period for coaches
Some voters hesitate to elect active coaches who might return to the field. To eliminate that concern, require a five-year waiting period after a coach’s last NFL game before they’re eligible. While rare exceptions exist, postponing eligibility makes the decision cleaner and avoids votes based on speculation about potential comebacks.
8. Publish every ballot
Making ballots public carries risks — ballot-writers were recently targeted online for how they voted on Belichick — but transparency is essential. Hall voters serve a public trust and should be accountable for their choices. If someone can’t withstand public scrutiny, they shouldn’t be a voter. Public ballots let fans and historians see the reasoning diversity and hold the system to a higher standard.
Conclusion
Taken together, these changes would create a more equitable, transparent, and rigorous Hall of Fame process. The honor should remain difficult to attain — still requiring a 75% threshold among a broad, experienced electorate over a candidate’s eligibility window — but those who make it would do so on merit, not because of procedural quirks, groupthink, or behind-the-scenes politicking. In the end, the sole question should be: “Is this person a Hall of Famer?”
Fan Take: Fixing the Hall’s broken selection process matters because fans want confidence that enshrinement truly reflects greatness, not politics or idiosyncratic voting rules. A fairer, clearer system would protect the Hall’s credibility and ensure that the sport’s legacy is preserved accurately for future generations.
