The Arbitrary Hall

As a preview, you are not opening up another Super Bowl analysis.  I realize others actually spend their waking hours watching football tape.  Those are the people you want to read for a preview of today’s game.  I figured there might be some room for another football topic today.

Specifically, it’s time someone wrote about the ridiculousness of the NFL’s Hall of Fame process.  HOFs are a tricky business…there should not be a set numerical standard for enshrinement, and yet whatever standard should not be completely arbitrary.  Baseball has chosen to address the issue of arbitrary protocols through the ballot voting percentage.  The benefit here: if 75% of voters agree, the guy likely deserves to be a Hall of Famer.  The downside: a player could end up at 70% for ten years, so does that guy deserve to be in the Hall or not?  Numerical percentages have issues like this.

The NFL has instituted a selection committee, a 46-person group that announces its decision on the Saturday before the Super Bowl.  The fun thing about this: there’s always gonna be someone inducted.  In fact, the NFL mandates that between four and seven players make the Hall each year.  In the voting room, any player who receives 80 percent of the selection board gets in.  If no one reaches that mark, the top four vote-getters automatically become the Hall of Fame class.

And that’s where the system starts to have problems, the biggest of which is an incentive issue.  Voters have no incentive to make a player a first ballot Hall of Famer, because if he’s that good, he will make it in sometime during the 15 year eligibility window.  Voters know this, and it has created a terrible consequence.   Namely, voters generally do not include players in the same class who played the same position.

This is madness, and the problem could not be more apparent right now at the wide receiver position.  This year, Andre Reed finally made the class in his seventh year of eligibility.  Reed, spent his career as the star receiver for the Buffalo Bills.  He logged 951 receptions over his career on a team that ran the ball the majority of the time.  Reed is a worthy inductee, but he beat out Tim Brown for this year’s class.  The same Brown who sits sixth in receiving yards all-time, who saw nine Pro Bowls compared to Reed’s seven, and who did this all without the benefit of Hall of Famer Jim Kelly throwing him the ball and deserves special recognition as a special teams player.  I will add Brown played the majority of his career when 4000 yards passing in a season still qualified as something extraordinary.

Are we really going to deny one of the top five receivers ever the chance to be a first-, second-, third-, and fourth-ballot Hall of Famer?  The Hall is obviously an honor, but some players deserve particular recognition by being first-ballot Hall of Famers.  If they’re good enough, put them in, end of discussion.  Cris Carter, the man who is second in receiving touchdowns and has over 1100 receptions to his name, waited six years for induction.   Six years for a guy who made eight straight Pro Bowls?

Of course, Reed’s induction yesterday guarantees that Tim Brown will be inducted.  But the problem of the position-specific approach has another manifestation besides the improper recognition of all-time greats. As more players from that position become eligible, the effect ripples out.  Marvin Harrison, Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, and Isaac Bruce are either already eligible or will be eligible in the next four years.  Of the top ten in receiving yards, all but two retired in the past decade.  Tim Brown is only one example, but it might get even worse.  Randy Moss is third in all-time receiving yards…how long will he need to wait?

The NFL needs to do away with the max seven players rule.  Bump it up to nine and reiterate that it’s okay to put multiple players from one position into the same class.  In a more radical move, the NFL could eliminate the numbers rule altogether,  Without a set number of inductees, voters would be way more likely to throw those deserving enshrinement into the Hall at the first possible opportunity, specifically because today’s voter has no guarantee about the preferences of classes to come.  The logjam at receiver would be mollified at the very least and perhaps eliminated altogether.

The Hall of Fame is an honor, one that should not be subject to the ridiculous idea that only one offensive tackle, linebacker, receiver, or quarterback can be part of a Hall of Fame class.

Bit #1: Super Bowl Prediction

I’m changing.  I like Denver to win 24-21.