He has more rings than fingers; for two decades, he defined the game. A cabal of secret voters, nursing grudges and wielding pens like petty swords, told us he isn’t worthy. This is why the Hall of Fame is broken.
LOS ANGELES –– There is a hill in Canton, Ohio that hoists the Pro Football Hall of Fame, a mausoleum of memory, like a father holding his child in his outstretched arms towards the heavens.
On quiet nights, when the tour guides have gone home and the lights dim to a reverent glow, you can almost hear the legends whisper.
Jim Brown's power. Jerry Rice's precision. Lawrence Taylor's fury.
They are forever, etched in bronze and immortal.
But there's a new voice trying to join the chorus,
There was one man who built an empire in the frigid, gray New England chill, in cut-off hoodies, curt short answers, and an encyclopedic recall of the game.
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New England Patriots strong safety Patrick Chung (23) talks with New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick prior to the game against the Miami Dolphins at Hard Rock Stadium.
His accolades: 333 career victories. Six Super Bowl championships as a head coach. Nine AFC titles. A .681 winning percentage over 29 seasons.
And the gatekeepers, the 50-member Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee, a shadowy cabal of keyboard warriors, operating in anonymous, unaccountable darkness, decided this monument is not worthy of immediate entry.
They decided to say he was unworthy of unanimous selection in his first year of eligibility.
Not yet. Maybe next year. Maybe when we feel like it.
William Stephen Belichick, the revolutionary, architect, auteur, was not voted in on the first ballot.
Let that sentence sit. Roll it around.
Taste its absurdity: the man who defined two decades of football, who made the rest of the league look like amateurs playing checkers while he played three-dimensional chess, was told to wait.
This is not a decision; it is an indictment. An indictment of a broken process, of petty vendettas masquerading as principled voting, of a profound and cowardly failure to understand the very game these voters are tasked with honoring.
Why? Because some writers have axes to grind and wield their votes like weapons.
Because personality trumps production.
Because the Hall of Fame has become less a museum of greatness and more a country club where the bouncers decide if your tie is tied correctly.
Let's speak plainly.
The arguments against Belichick's first-ballot status are flimsy façades for personal grievance.
Yes, his tenure was marred by the clouds of Spygate and Deflategate. To ignore them is folly.
They are stains on the tapestry, questions of morality and competitive fairness that deserve discussion.
But since when does the Hall of Fame require sainthood? Since when is it a chapel of congeniality?
It is a museum of professional football achievement. And by that solitary, sacred metric, Belichick is the zenith; he is the apex predator.
Bill Belichick is the baddest BeliGOAT!!! In a room full of Jedis striving to become Darth Vader, he was Senator Palpatine.
But this isn't unprecedented; this isn't the first time something this egregious has happened.
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New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick speaks to the media before an NFL International Series practice at the Deutcher Fussball-Bund facility.
Terrell Owens should have been a first-ballot Hall of Famer. It should have been unanimous. We should have rioted then. Fans should have stormed Canton's halls and demanded reform.
Instead, he waited three years.
Why? Not for a lack of yards or touchdowns, but for a surplus of personality. Writers didn't like him.
Because Owens was "a locker room cancer." Because he celebrated too much. Because he made reporters wait for interviews. Because he didn't play nice.
Owens wasn't selected because he believed in and loved himself.
They weaponized their votes. They made it personal. And now, they do it to the greatest coaching mind of the modern era.
When did "playing nice" become a prerequisite for immortalizing greatness?
Since when does a 40-yard dash require a charm school diploma?
Owens caught 1,078 receptions, 153 touchdowns, accumulated 15,934 yards, redefined the receiver position—and was punished because he either smiled too much, or didn't smile enough at the right people.
The voters—those 50 anonymous arbiters of history—confused contribution with congeniality.
They conflated production with pleasantries.
They looked at a man who dominated his position for a decade and said, "Yes, but did we like him?"
Now they're doing it again.
Again, when did "likability" become a stat category? Since when does a surly press conference outweigh a schematic revolution that defined two decades of football?
Bill Belichick didn't just win. He didn't just scheme. He didn't just dominate.
He won six Super Bowls as a head coach, nine total if you count his time as defensive coordinator with the Giants.
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New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick celebrates with the Vince Lombardi Trophy after defeating the Carolina Panthers during Super Bowl XXXVIII at Reliant Stadium. The Patriots defeated the Panthers 32-29.
No one else has six. No one else is close.
He won 31 playoff games—most of all-time.
Belichick won 302 regular-season games—third all-time, trailing Don Shula and George Halas. He had 20 consecutive winning seasons. He won 17 division titles. He made the playoffs 19 times.
He revolutionized defensive game-planning.
He authored the blueprint to slow the "Greatest Show on Turf."
He mastered the salary cap, turning over rosters while maintaining supremacy.
He made the phrase "next man up" a terrifying reality for opponents.
He found Tom Brady when no one saw the scrawny kid from Michigan's will to win or the talent to place the burden of a dynasty on his shoulders. He turned a sixth-round afterthought into arguably the greatest quarterback ever, yes, but also made Matt Cassel an 11-game winner when he lost Brady for the year due to a knee injury.
He made Jacoby Brissett look competent. He made Jimmy Garoppolo a $137 million man.
His coaching tree spreads across the league, a rainforest of influence. The list of proteges —a vast canopy —shades half the league: Brian Flores, Matt Patricia, Joe Judge, Josh McDaniels, Mike Vrabel.
Belichick's contributions are not just wins; they are the very language of contemporary NFL strategy.
He didn't just coach players. He weaponized them. He turned Julian Edelman from a college quarterback into a Super Bowl MVP. He made Rob Ninkovich a star. He took guys off the street—Mike Vrabel, Rodney Harrison, Corey Dillon—and made them champions.
But stats are just the opening argument. The real case is what Belichick did between the numbers.
He revolutionized situational football, turning fourth downs into chess moves and red zones into kill zones.
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New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick talks to his defense during the second quarter against the New York Jets at Gillette Stadium.
Belichick was the Dr. Seuss of the gridiron.
He won with offense. He won with defense.
He won in snow, in heat, in domes, on grass, on turf.
He found ways to win even after the league changed the rules to stop him.
He won when the league investigated him. He won when everyone knew what was coming and still couldn't stop it.
The Associated Press named Belichick Coach of the Year three times.
Three times. Not 10. Not 15.
Because voters, again, confused "best story" with "best coach." Because they were tired of voting for the same guy. Because they wanted to feel important.
Now the nuance.
The counterargument. Because intellectual honesty demands it.
Bill Belichick led Spygate. He was involved in Deflategate. He stood on the sideline while a team employee filmed opponents' signals. He oversaw a football operation that allegedly deflated footballs below legal limits. He was fined; draft picks were docked.
The coach of a lifetime earned the label of a cheat.
Does this matter? Should it?
Here's the question voters must answer: Is the Hall of Fame a museum of achievement or a cathedral of virtue? Because if it's the latter, we have problems.
There are busts of men who beat their wives, drove drunk, used PEDs and crack cocaine; there are men in Canton's halls who gambled on games, who did things far worse than filming a coach's hand signals from the wrong location.
The Hall of Fame has never been about purity. It's been about impact.
About changing the game. About being so good, so dominant, so revolutionary that you cannot tell the story of football without mentioning your name.
Belichick didn't just tell the story; he rewrote the book on every aspect of the game.
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New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick answers questions during Media Day at The University of Phoenix Stadium. The New England Patriots will face the New York Giants Sunday February 3, 2008.
Literally, his scouting manuals became league-wide bibles.
His approach to situational football became the standard. Every coach who punts on fourth-and-1 now gets compared to Belichick. Every coach who goes for it does so because Belichick proved it could work.
Morality matters. Character counts.
But do we remove the inventor of the forward pass because he was a curmudgeon? Do we take out Vince Lombardi because he was demanding? Do we expel George Halas for cutting corners in the early days?
No.
Because the Hall of Fame is not the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
It's Canton. It's bronze. It's forever.
And yet, the gnomes whisper. They hide behind secret ballots.
Why?
Why are the voters' names and votes not public?
We demand players and coaches live in the glaring, unforgiving public eye. We dissect their failures, dismiss their pain and demand performance through personal disarray.
If a coach punts on fourth-and-1 and the analytics say go, Twitter explodes. If a quarterback throws an interception, his mentions become a sewer. If a player misses a tackle, he's trending for all the wrong reasons.
But the voters?
They operate in a shrouded cloister, accountable to no one, free to nurse ancient grudges, to make "statements" with their ballots.
It is a system built on hypocrisy, a coward's game. The voters warm themselves in a blanket of anonymity.
We don't know who voted against him. We don't know their names. We don't know their reasoning.
Perhaps a voter thought, "He'll get in eventually, I'll vote for a deserving senior candidate."
This is the logic of the weak. It is a dereliction of duty.
Voting for someone less deserving because you assume everyone else will is the weakest argument in the history of weak arguments. It's saying, "I knew Bill deserved it, but I thought you guys would handle it."
It's cowardice disguised as strategy.
It's negligence wrapped in virtue.
It's the same logic that leads to voter apathy in our political elections—"my vote doesn't matter"—except here, the vote literally decides immortality.
Bill Belichick should have been an unanimous decision.
Not 90 percent. Not 99.9 percent.
One hundred percent.
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New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick talks to his players on the sideline as they take on the Miami Dolphins during the first quarter at Gillette Stadium.
Every single voter should have looked at the resume, the rings, and the revolutionary impact, and said, "Yes." Without question or hesitation.
If one person voted no, that's a failure of the system. If more than one voted no, that's a failure of the sport.
A Hall of Fame vote is not for strategic patronage; it is for recognition of transcendent merit.
Belichick's merit is not debatable; it is mathematical, historical, factual.
A collection of 50 men and women decides on football immortality.
They hide. They cast ballots in secret. They never have to explain.
They never have to defend.
They never have to look Bill Belichick in the eye and say, "You weren't good enough.
It's cowardice. It's hypocrisy. It's the pettiest form of power—the power to say no without consequence.
Terrell Owens had to wait three years, then watch his bust get unveiled while the voters who snubbed him sat anonymously in the crowd.
Belichick, if he gets in next year, will face the same indignity.
The greatest coach ever will be made to feel grateful for being "allowed" in, as if he were applying for membership rather than being unanimously coronated.
Some voters say they want to wait. They want to make sure. They want to see if anyone else is more deserving, as if six rings and 31 playoff wins are somehow ambiguous.
Perhaps voters, familiar with the totality of his dominance, looked only at the messy final years in New England, the failed Cleveland stint, the post-Brady record.
This is myopia.
This is judging Babe Ruth by his strikeouts.
The arc of a legacy is measured in peaks, and Belichick's peak is Mount Everest in a league of foothills.
This is where the argument for younger voters becomes urgent––people like me.
Not because younger people are inherently wiser, but because we saw Belichick in real-time.
We watched the games live.
We didn't read about Spygate in columns; we watched the 16-0 season that ensued, the perfect middle finger to a league that tried to tear him down.
Younger voters understand that greatness isn't always polite.
We understand that Jordan was a tyrant, that Kobe was abrasive, that Brady was icy and distant.
We know that the best in any field are often egotistical, monomaniacal megomaniacs, equally difficult and demanding. Because greatness requires obsession, and obsession is rarely charming.
But that isn't the current pathway to Canton; the voting bloc skews older.
It bends towards reporters who covered the league in a time when sports were consumed on the nightly news and on the pages of papers.
Before podcasts, before the internet, before social media pages dedicated to film study, analysis, and breakdowns; when Belichick was an assistant, when he teemed with a brusque demeanor and terse words, when he made their jobs harder.
And now, in his moment of immortalization, they remember the slight more than the six trophies.
So what is the point?
This isn't just about Bill Belichick; it's about what we value.
It's about whether the Hall of Fame is a museum of America's greatest game, an ode to military might and strategy, or a popularity contest.
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New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick talks with his defense during the first quarter against the Miami Dolphins at Gillette Stadium.
It's about whether we reward achievement or affability.
It's about the soul of our nation, about the state of our democracy.
Belichick's contributions extend far beyond the wins.
He changed how defenses think. He made 12 personnel, the two-tight-end set, a weapon.
He proved that special teams could win championships. He showed that situational football—knowing exactly what to do on third-and-7 from your own 43 with 2:14 left in the second quarter—was as important as raw talent.
Belichick created a culture of excellence so remarkable that players who thrived under his tutelage often struggled elsewhere when they left New England, not because they weren't good, but because they'd been playing chess while everyone else played checkers.
The Patriots Way became a cliché, but clichés become clichés because they're true.
He made the rest of the NFL better by forcing them to adapt.
Teams hired his disciples. They copied his schemes. They studied his film. In their best efforts, they tried to replicate HIM.
He was the sun, and everyone else was just trying to catch some rays.
And now, because some writers didn't like his press conferences, because he was "difficult," because he made them feel small, he waits.
If Bill Belichick isn't first-ballot, then no one should be. If the greatest coach in NFL history must wait for Canton's embrace, then the Hall of Fame should close its doors.
Because it has ceased to be what it claims to be.
When the greatest coach of this century—perhaps of any century—is not a first-ballot, unanimous selection, then the vote itself is a farce.
It is a social club, not a serious historical undertaking.
It suggests that contributions to the game are secondary to comfort, that innovation is less important than irritation.
The Hall of Fame has become a museum of grudges; a shrine to subjectivity.
A place where 50 anonymous people get to play God with someone else's legacy.
The message sent is corrosive: Excellence is not enough. To be selected, you must also be palatable. You must be gentle with our notebooks and kind to our egos.
For a game predicated upon exerting and imposing your will on another man, this is how we dishonor it.
Football is a game built on collision, competition and cold, hard results. It is predicated upon the exchange of sweat, blood, and tears; a microcosm of life–– of being battered, bruised and beaten, and having the gumption and heart to drag your will back into the huddle.
Bill Belichick belongs in the Hall of Fame.
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New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick the field from the sideline during the first half against the Kansas City Chiefs at Gillette Stadium.
Not next year. Not in a genteel, negotiated compromise. Bill Belichick belonged while he was still coaching, let alone the moment he stepped away.
To say otherwise is not just wrong; it is an intellectual and historical fraud, perpetuated by small people in a dark room, behind their keyboards, afraid of the shadow cast by a giant.
Shame on every single one of them.
Make the ballots public.
Make the voters defend their choices. Make them sit in a room with Belichick and look him in the eyes to explain why his six rings weren't enough.
Make them look at the bronze busts of Lombardi, Halas and Noll, and explain why Belichick doesn't yet belong among them.
Or admit what this is: the pettiest, most pathetic display of power in American sports.
A group of writers who couldn't win on the field, or accomplish anything as meaningful in and with their lives, win in secret rooms with secret ballots, wielding their pens like swords against a giant they could never defeat, where it mattered.
Bill Belichick doesn't need the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame needs him.
Because without him, it's just a building. With him, it's a cathedral.
The pedestal sits empty. The voters sit in shadows. And the greatest coach who ever lived waits for permission to take his rightful place.
His omission and the weaponization of the vote are an atrocity to all of us who have grown to love the game.
It's not just idiotic; it's a crime against history.
Category: General Sports
